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Former Sixers coach Brett Brown to rejoin the San Antonio Spurs coaching staff

Brown coached the Sixers through "the Process." He'll be reunited with Gregg Popovich in San Antonio.

Former Sixers coach Brett Brown (right) with Gregg Popovich of the Spurs before their game at the Wells Fargo Center on Jan 3, 2018. Brown was once an assistant coach with the Spurs under Popovich.
Former Sixers coach Brett Brown (right) with Gregg Popovich of the Spurs before their game at the Wells Fargo Center on Jan 3, 2018. Brown was once an assistant coach with the Spurs under Popovich.Read moreCHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer

Brett Brown is heading back to the San Antonio Spurs.

The former 76ers coach is rejoining Gregg Popovich’s coaching staff in San Antonio, the website Sportando reported Thursday. A league source confirmed the report to The Inquirer.

Brown, 61, coached the Sixers through “the Process” and to consecutive 50-win campaigns before he was fired on Aug. 24, 2020.

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He compiled a 221-344 regular-season record and a 12-14 postseason mark with the Sixers. But perhaps his most telling statistic is having coached 102 players in what resembled a revolving door with the rebuilding team.

Brown was hired away from his assistant coaching stint with the Spurs in August 2013, shortly before the Sixers began the first of three seasons of deliberately losing dubbed “the Process.” At the time, the belief was that he would rack up a lot of losses, develop fringe players, and be gone before the team started to turn things around.

The coach, however, defied the odds during his seven-year tenure with the Sixers.

He survived a 10-72 record during his third season. He outlasted two general managers and briefly was interim general manager before one of his former players, Elton Brand, became his third GM. Brown took a team from 28 wins one season to 52 the next. He led the Sixers to three consecutive playoff appearances.

However, the Sixers were eliminated in the second round in the first two postseason runs. The third appearance ended with the team being swept in the first round by the Boston Celtics in 2020, leading to Brown’s firing.

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Under Brown, the Sixers failed to live up to their lofty expectations and even some of his self-promotion.

This would mark Brown’s third tenure with the Spurs. He took a volunteer job with San Antonio in 1999 after spending six seasons coaching the North Melbourne Giants of the National Basketball League in Australia. Brown returned to Australia in 2000 to coach the Sydney Kings for two seasons before going back to the Spurs in 2002 as the full-time player development coach. He was promoted to the bench before the 2006-07 season.

Brown won four NBA championship rings with San Antonio before taking the Sixers coaching job.