Fair or not, the pressure is all on the Sixers’ Brett Brown. His boss has made that clear. | David Murphy

The biggest development in Sixersland this weekend wasn’t the game. That’s not an uncommon occurrence for this organization, even on a weekend where the defending NBA champs are in town. This time, it was the man at the top of the food chain making waves. Or, at least, raising an eyebrow or two.

Even if you did not get a chance to catch Josh Harris’ comments to ESPN, you better believe coach Brett Brown did. After telling the outlet that an early exit from the postseason would be “problematic,” the Sixers majority owner left little doubt about his definition of “early.”

“We want to make sure at a minimum to advance deeper in the playoffs than we did last year,” Harris said.

» READ MORE: What Josh Harris told ESPN

From the perspective of an emotionally invested owner, or a rabid fan base, those words might seem unremarkable. But when you look at them from the perspective of a head coach, and you consider their implications from such a vantage point, you might find that they take on an ominous tone.

Yeah, it sounds easy enough. The Sixers advanced to a certain point last year, and they are one year older, and, presumably, one year better, so it only makes sense that they’d expect to advance to whatever point lies next on the continuum. Except, that point is the Eastern Conference finals, and you are probably aware that said destination can be reached by only two of the conference’s 15 teams. And while the Sixers are almost certainly better equipped and more capable of making that sort of run than they were at this time last season, they also had a heck of a lot of ground to make up.

According to Harris’ construction, success or failure is not an endgame entirely within the Sixers’ control. Not only do they have to be the best version of themselves, but that version must also be better than the versions of the Raptors, Bucks, and Celtics that show up to the Eastern Conference playoffs. Or, more accurately, it must be better than two of those three.

That’s not the most comfortable situation for a coach to find himself in, especially one who has been forced to deal with the flux that Brown has encountered throughout this season. Markelle Fultz was starting, and then he wasn’t, and then he was hurt, or something, and then he was gone. Mikal Bridges was in the Sixers rotation, and then, maybe 10 minutes later, he was headed to Phoenix. Zhaire Smith might have been able to help, except he was a Sixers rookie drafted in the first round, which meant he was bound to spend his first season in the NBA battling some bizarre and unforeseen malady. And none of those guys even count among the three different teams that Brown has coached this season, starting with the Robert Covington/Dario Saric 2018 redux squad, proceeding to the Jimmy Butler Experience, and now, finally, the soon-to-be playoff edition that includes Tobias Harris, Mike Scott and Co.

Brown’s a smart enough guy to understand that it really doesn’t matter if two or three months isn’t enough time to fashion this current collection of parts into a title-contending whole. He doesn’t have a choice.

Those in the media and fan base who are building a case against him no doubt added another evidence box to their stack with the mayhem that unfolded in the closing minute of Saturday’s 120-117 loss to the Warriors. Brown defended his decision to have Ben Simmons intentionally miss a free throw with 10 seconds remaining. He made no similar attempt to vouch for Scott’s decision to intentionally foul Kevin Durant with 35 seconds remaining and the Sixers down by three. Whatever he said, when taken together, the two incidents were hardly a good look.

Nor is the fact that the Sixers have now lost 13 of the 19 games that they’ve played against teams who entered Sunday with a .600+ winning percentage, including seven of eight against the three teams who are their most formidable contenders in their quest to rep the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals.

Yet the flux isn’t something anybody should dismiss. It’s not an excuse, preemptive or otherwise. But it is a factor, and it warrants consideration before judgment is rendered.

“I think the thing that you feel for the players is there’s so much situation stuff that we just really haven’t had a chance to go through with our new guys,” Brown said after Saturday’s shenanigans. "Even though these guys are great players and have been around the league a long time, every coaching staff is sort of different, and some of it isn’t their fault. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the fact that we’ve been with each other for a minute, and, at times like that, it rears its head and you feel that pain.”

Brown has little bit longer than a minute to get this team to a point at which it can reasonably hope to win a seven-game series against the Raptors or Celtics or Bucks. But not much. Harris clearly sees a clock ticking on this current phase of his process. He may not have intended to put Brown on notice with his comments. But that would certainly seem to be their effect.