The Sixers’ identity change could take some time, and Brett Brown deserves at least that much | David Murphy

The old saying goes that the only coach whose job is safe is the coach who does not have one, and Brett Brown has always been a man who almost cheerfully abides by it. But even for a coach as accustomed to questions about his future as Brown has become over the last few years, the reports that swirled around him last postseason seemed different, almost criminally so.

Right up until the final couple of bounces of the Sixers’ near-upset of the Raptors in Game 7 of the conference semifinals, he was forced to contend with perception that his fate depended on the Sixers’ ability to advance to the conference finals, a perception fed in part by the conspicuous silence of those above him in the chain of command.

When it was over, both Brown and managing partner Josh Harris insisted that the coach knew all along that his job was safe, and that the only vote of confidence he needed was the three-year contract extension he had signed the offseason before.

Still, given the uncertainty that surrounded him throughout last season, and in the wake of an offseason spending spree that prompted at least one Sixers player to predict a cakewalk to the NBA Finals, isn’t the pressure a little different this time around?

In Brown’s words: Hell, no.

“How long have we been doing this?” the Sixers’ head coach asked on Wednesday afternoon.

The answer: Far too long.

From the moment the Sixers became a team that was expected to win games rather than lose them, a vocal contingent of the public sphere has held Brown to be the No. 1 impediment to success in that mission. When they lost to the Celtics in 2017-18, they weren’t a young team that simply failed to accomplish what no other team of its experience level had ever accomplished. They were a team that had been outcoached to such an extent that any hope of future accomplishment under the current regime was officially ashes. The thinking was the same when they struggled against the Eastern Conference heavyweights during the 2018-19 regular season, when one of those heavyweights blew them out in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. The Sixers weren’t simply a team that had lost the first of a seven-game series, they were a team that had lost the series itself, a fait accompli sealed by Brown’s self-evident inability to adjust to a quality opponent and a quality opposing coach.

Yet there they were, those same detractors, standing in front of their seats on a Sunday in mid-May, eyes wide and mouths agape as the Sixers’ championship hopes died not with a Richter-quivering implosion but with one of the most geometrically improbable paths that an inflated ball can follow after making contact with a circular rim. As the adrenaline settled and the tears dried, Brown’s critics were left to reconcile their preconceived notions with two facts that became even more inconvenient when the Raptors put the finishing touches on their NBA title.

1) The Sixers’ win total -- counting the playoffs -- had improved in each of their four previous seasons, from 10 to 28 to 57 to 58. And while Brown fell short of his boss’ stated expectation of advancing further in the postseason than the team had the year before, the fact is they came with a couple of bounces of a seven-game victory over a team that would end up needing just six apiece to dispatch the Bucks and Warriors.

2) In a season in which the Sixers had twice remade their identity and sacrificed much of their depth in order to do so, Brown guided the Sixers back from deficits of 1-0 and 3-2 to push the eventual NBA champions to the furthest possible edge on their home court. This, with a second-year point guard and third-year center whose respective limitations prompted Brown to put his team on the shoulders of a veteran player, Jimmy Butler, who wound up experiencing more success in his 67 games as a Sixer than he had in his first seven years as a pro.

These are facts, nothing more. However one feels about Brown’s capabilities as a game-day technician, his resume says what it says, and after last season it now includes a number of references from the champions themselves heralding the Sixers as the toughest competition they faced in their route to the title. While it might not entirely contradict the notion that this team cannot win a ring with him, it absolutely suggests that ownership and the fan base should afford him plenty of patience as he spends the early part of the season molding his rotation to fit his vision of a championship-caliber unit.

“Talent does not trump time,” Brown said.

Chances are, the Sixers are going to need some of the latter, and it only seems fair that the head coach gets a fair allotment, too. With six of their first eight games on the road, including a tough West Coast swing that includes games against contenders Portland, Utah, and Denver, the schedule does not provide a tailor-made opportunity for a team that is attempting to radically reshape its identity into what Brown described as “smash-mouth offense and bully-ball defense.” But that should be OK. Because the goals of this team are long-term ones: keep Joel Embiid and Al Horford healthy and spry while figuring out the optimal way to deploy what should be one of the NBA’s biggest, deepest, and most athletic rosters so that it can spend the final two-thirds of the season rattling off the sorts of winning streaks that result in the No. 1 seed come playoff time.

The hot seat?

“My temperature concern is my team,” Brown said. "It’s the locker room, it’s what are we doing, the health, the spirit, all that. For sure, there’s pride. For sure. I can’t look at you and say I don’t care. That’s not true, either. But I can tell you that, completely, I feel at peace with the purpose, I feel at peace with what I need to focus most on. Does it drip feed at times into the pride of being a good coach and winning games and trying to deliver a championship to the city? Of course. Does it dilute or cripple my thinking? Hell, no. It does not.”

Nor should it.