Sixers fall in OT; Brown sets team record for losses
INDIANAPOLIS - When his team lost to the Indiana Pacers Wednesday night, Brett Brown took a dubious place in 76ers history.
INDIANAPOLIS - When his team lost to the Indiana Pacers Wednesday night, Brett Brown took a dubious place in 76ers history.
Brown is now all alone for the most coaching losses in franchise history, with 206. Before Wednesday night, he was tied with Larry Brown. That Brett Brown was even tied with Larry Brown for losses is not a positive sign. Larry Brown coached the Sixers for 460 games; Brett Brown had coached in just 253 after a 122-115 overtime setback at Bankers Life Fieldhouse.
The Sixers fought hard. Small forward Robert Covington had season highs of five three-pointers and 23 points. Reserve guard Hollis Thompson (19 points), shooting guard Gerald Henderson (17), center Jahlil Okafor (15), and power forward Dario Saric (14 points, 12 rebounds) also reached double figures.
But Indiana stars Paul George and Jeff Teague were unstoppable. Teague scored a game-high 30 points from his point-guard spot. George, a small forward, tallied seven of his 28 points in overtime. The Sixers made only 1 of 9 shots in the extra session.
The loss dropped Brown's record to 47-206 for a winning percentage of 18.6. He can only hope that his record will gradually get better. It would be hard to imagine things getting much worse.
"The position that I have is so much more than that," Brown said of his record after the game. "We are trying to grow a program with a bunch of 20-year-olds. I don't even care about it nor think about it."
The Sixers will take an 0-7 record into Friday's matchup against the Pacers (4-4) at the Wells Fargo Center. Wednesday's game marked their 11th straight loss dating back to last season. It also marked the Sixers' 44th straight loss in the months of October and November since they beat the Milwaukee Bucks on Nov. 22, 2013.
In fairness, Brett Brown's situation is much different from that of Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown.
The Sixers hired Larry Brown on May 5, 1997, with the hope that he would bring another NBA title to the franchise. He nearly delivered during the 2000-01 season, leading the Sixers to the NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers. They lost in five games.
Brett Brown was hired on Aug. 14, 2013, to rebuild the Sixers. He was told the team would sacrifice wins to secure a lottery pick during his first season. That was far from the truth. The Sixers tanked for three seasons and became the laughingstock of the NBA.
The thought was that the franchise would begin to turn things around this season under new president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo. However, the results have been mostly the same because of injuries to several key players.
First overall pick and point forward Ben Simmons could return in January after surgery to repair a broken right foot. Point guard Jerryd Bayless is sidelined with ligament damage in his left wrist. Reserve center Nerlens Noel, the team's best rim protector, is out with inflamed tissue above his left knee. None of the three have played this season.
Joel Embiid has played, and has been impressive. But the center has been on a short leash to carefully manage his workload and the stress on his right foot during games and practice. He sat out Wednesday. He also sat out the Nov. 2 loss to the Hornets in Charlotte because it was the second game on back-to-back nights. The team formulated the plan to not play him on back-to-backs. And when he does play, the Sixers restrict his minutes. They're doing the same thing for Okafor, who started in place of Embiid on Wednesday.
"We'd all be lying if we didn't admit" that injuries altered this season, Brown said.
So he'll tell you that his job is to keep the team together and try to improve Embiid, Okafor, and Saric as players.
His supporters will argue that he's doing the best that he can without an NBA-caliber starting point guard and elite healthy players to depend on. Others have criticized Brown for the Sixers' failures in the pick-and-roll and an inability to convert in late-game situations.
The criticism spreads after each loss. This time, folks will criticize him for playing Sergio Rodriguez for 31 minutes, 21 seconds even though the point guard scored just two points on 1-for-14 shooting. They'll also criticize him for sitting Thompson for all but the final 37.2 seconds of the overtime session despite his scoring 10 points in the fourth.
Brown said he did that to get better defenders Henderson and Covington on the court.
"Hollis came in and gave us good contribution," Brown said. "He made shots, but he fatigued. We ended up playing him a lot of minutes [9:14] during that [fourth-quarter] stretch. I thought he played well."
But he understands the criticism. Brown said that's part of any professional coaching job. He believes "it's really magnified with my job the past four years with the different things that have come our way."
Brown calls himself the gatekeeper of the Sixers' culture and a steward to the ownership group.
"You take responsibility in those roles," he said. "You take pride in those roles. . . . My motivation and my focus remains the same. Nothing has diminished in relation to my passion or my belief of what we are doing."
But as he pointed out, the losing has just gone deeper into his tenure.
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