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Donnellon: For Sixers' coach, same blueprint, different year

THROUGH THE traditional prism of professional sports, Brett Brown is crazy. How else do you explain him? The money? Sorry, he could make it elsewhere. Despite three consecutive seasons filled with more losses than any of his peers, Brown still garners their respect, if not his current bosses'. The moment the Sixers traded Michael

Sixers head coach Brett Brown chats with Joel Embiid during a timeout.
Sixers head coach Brett Brown chats with Joel Embiid during a timeout.Read moreSteven M. Falk / Staff Photographer

THROUGH THE traditional prism of professional sports, Brett Brown is crazy.

How else do you explain him? The money? Sorry, he could make it elsewhere. Despite three consecutive seasons filled with more losses than any of his peers, Brown still garners their respect, if not his current bosses'. The moment the Sixers traded Michael Carter-Williams, the moment they fired the guy who studiously hired him, Brown could have easily and understandably pulled a Doug Moe or Larry Brown and Curly-shuffled his way out of here.

The joy of coaching? Right. No coach has been forced to start and stop as much as he has. His classroom has been an endless stream of transfers, his textbooks missing pages if not entire chapters.

"Is there a blueprint out there for what you have to do here, what you've been doing?" I asked him Tuesday.

"I haven't seen one," he said. "I haven't seen one.

"I get excited to actually answer this question."

"You do?" I asked, incredulously.

"I do," he said. "Because I'm asked often about the template by which we all should be judged and what's the goals and this and that . . . I said it yesterday and I'm going to say it again: It hasn't changed. Like, the foundation in the holistic approach of what we're trying to do is still the same as when I met everybody here. You're trying to develop our players, you're trying to teach them what NBA actually means. You're trying to get them educated in habits and routines of sports science. And I do understand after four years that gets a little old.

"But I don't mind telling you where it's at. So this thing, is there a blueprint? It's still the same blueprint."

And then he went on to praise the development of Richaun Holmes and Jerami Grant and Robert Covington.

"Those guys have emerged; they've improved," he said. "And we need to say the same thing about Dario (Saric) and Jahlil (Okafor) and Joel (Embiid). And some of the other people who will come because of opportunity. So I feel that's my world, that's my blueprint."

Crazy, right? Here he is, on the brink of his fourth season in Philadelphia, once again trying to figure out who's going to replace the latest injured point guard who was obtained to replace the injured point guard before that. Here he is, once again, waiting out another extensive injury to another young star around whom he is supposed to build his latest collection of talent, making do while hoping to make progress with a lopsided roster of big men and swingmen, all or most of them young, young, young.

Yes, there's tons more talent here than before, even if it's raw. But where are we are on the timeline, if there even is a timeline? A year away? Three years away? Five years away?

Does anyone out there even trust a timeline anymore?

I am in my fourth decade of covering sports. I cannot recall a situation like this, for as long as it has been like this, every silver lining drawing its own monsoon. No sooner does Embiid get past his injury issues than Okafor gets his. Or Nerlens Noel. They get a little good luck with the No. 1 pick in the draft. They get more bad luck when Ben Simmons breaks a foot. Now, it seems, the No. 1 pick might not play a game until next year, or even next season and, well, where have you heard that before?

The end of the tunnel? It's like a Slinky, that tunnel. Any time Brown gets anywhere near its end, it seems to stretch out just a little bit further. The other day he estimated that he has coached 14 point guards in his tenure - six in his first season alone - but if you count the guys he made play the point while searching for the latest rental at the position, it probably extends closer to 20.

And yet the brand-new practice facility in Camden was filled Tuesday with smiles and hope and resolution as the team practiced for Wednesday night's season opener against the Oklahoma City Thunder at the Wells Fargo Center. Embiid, finally on the court this summer and fall, spoke of learning to "play calm." Saric spoke of getting acclimated to the NBA, mused about playing against Russell Westbrook for the first time.

"It's weird, you play two years, five years, PlayStation game against NBA players," he said. "And now you are real life."

But the most upbeat person on this day, and on most days, is the coach who has awakened so, so many times to nightmarish updates of restart trades and blueprint-busting injuries, his answers almost always conjuring up scenes from two comedy movies:

"Groundhog Day," where Bill Murray wakes up to the same day over and over again.

And "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," where guards observe a raucous charging cavalry that never seems to get any closer.

It's still the same blueprint, Brett Brown insists, even as his hair has grayed radically from when he first took the job. Maybe he's right. Maybe that's natural aging, not some cumulative effect, I don't know.

"It's coming," he said repeatedly this summer and fall. And maybe, just maybe, the Slinky has stretched as far as it can go. My hope, though, is the guy crazy enough to work this hard for it and wait this long for it will be there to see it whenever whatever arrives.

@samdonnellon