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Cooney: For Sixers, it's the most unwonderful time of the year

THE WRITING is on the wall. With 19 games remaining, the 76ers will be expected to win very few of them. Joel Embiid will be watching from the sideline while nursing his left knee, which has a slightly torn meniscus. Ben Simmons will continue to participate in basketball activities - he took part in a controlled, light, noncontact practice Tuesday - as the Jones fracture in his right foot continues to heal.

THE WRITING is on the wall. With 19 games remaining, the 76ers will be expected to win very few of them. Joel Embiid will be watching from the sideline while nursing his left knee, which has a slightly torn meniscus. Ben Simmons will continue to participate in basketball activities - he took part in a controlled, light, noncontact practice Tuesday - as the Jones fracture in his right foot continues to heal.

Nerlens Noel will be busy helping the Dallas Mavericks make a playoff push over the next six weeks and Ersan Ilyasova will be trying to move the Atlanta Hawks into the upper half of the eight-team Eastern Conference playoff bracket.

Three of those four were key pieces who helped the Sixers post the most exciting month of basketball over the past four seasons when they won 10 of their 15 games in January. As usual, the trade deadline depleted the roster, and others have been brought in to fill spots and the familiarity of a rotation was given away for draft picks and hopeful contributors.

To derail the sickening feel of it all, coach Brett Brown searches for diversions from the reality that is staring him and his team right in the face for the remaining games of the season, beginning Thursday in Portland.

Tuesday, after a team breakfast, there was a PowerPoint presentation by Richaun Holmes. Always wanting to keep his players familiar with current events, the coach schedules eight or so of these presentations each season where a player will pick a subject that is relevant in the world and deliver a message to the team and coaches. Holmes spoke Tuesday about the effects of drugs around the world. There was then a fun, light workout, followed by a gala for sponsors Tuesday night. It was a day filled with peripheral activities, as if to keep minds away from the upcoming final weeks of the season. Not a bad idea when you consider this depleted, unfamiliar group will play 11 of the next 14 games on the road.

"Richaun talked about drugs in America - the different laws, the epidemic versus legalization versus abuse," said Brown. "It was interesting to open it up to our foreign guys, like what goes on in Spain, Croatia, Australia and Canada. It's a great conversation. You know how much I like to grow this part of the program. It was very open and people had different opinions on it. It was a good conversation.

"Things like this lead me into how I want to, and what I've learned how I think best, to handle this time of the year. Four years in a row now, we've gone through this type of period and that forum lets me more easily segue into how I really see this time of year. That's a portion of it, staying together, interacting, keeping your minds free and understanding the reality of what we're about to get into, about to go on the road and those type of things. It lets me segue, cleanly, into how I really see the world in relation to post All-Star break and trades, etc."

As evidence, Brown's team went 2-27 after the All-Star break last season, 6-23 the year before and 4-24 in 2013-14. That's 12-74 combined after the roster had been changed by moves at the trade deadline. It probably will get no better this season. They Sixers have lost five of the seven since the break so far and now embark on their second western trip of the season.

You can understand the attempt to divert the attention of his team by Brown.

"I look at it very clearly in my eyes," said Brown. "The first thing I'll tell everybody is bunker down - fans, media and players. We've done this for four years. We completely understand what's around the corner. You've got 11 out of 14 games that are on the road. Eight of those 14 are playoff teams. Two of those are last year's finalists. We have a team that isn't like the team we had in January.

"We've navigated post-All-Star breaks with trades and injuries many times. We are experienced dealing with this environment. It's all about helping our guys get better. What are your personal goals to end the year? We're going to help you achieve that. We will compete, we will stay together. I'm not going to lose my mind. I will keep this thing whole, I will keep it together. It will retain a realness to it, but it's that and with that becomes a real sort of clear reality of where we are, with the schedule, with the team and what's around the corner with drafts and summer, with the maintenance of our injured players. All of that is on my mind as we go through what's about to happen up until April 12.

"I think you recognize that rim protection is not what it used to be. I feel like our second-team perimeter people are new and are trying to figure out what the system is. The reality that you bring in people for a week or a day, I know that the public understands that it's not a video game. This isn't something you just make up and all of the sudden you fix and grab what you used to have, because you don't and you can't.

"You try to find ways to incrementally make it better. I have a real concern that I don't want to just beat Robert (Covington) and Dario (Saric) down with extended minutes and an overexpectation of them having to carry a tremendous load. The realities of our roster are very clear to everybody. There is no mystery as to what our roster is right now. When you overlay that with who you are about to play and different situations that we are in as it relates to timing that defense, offense, execution, it's going to take some extra effort and extra luck in finding ways to compete because the environment is completely different than it was in January."

So different, but still the same in many ways.

cooneyb@phillynews.com

@BobCooney76

Blog: philly.com/SixersblogCooney