The Philadelphia 76ers entered the 2019-20 season looking to fulfill their much-lauded “Process.” At the center of it all has been head coach Brett Brown, who took over the club's coaching duties prior to the 2013 season. He promptly failed to win 20 games in any of his next three years at the helm, yet he has retained his role as the Sixers ascended to the top of the Eastern Conference.
There have been myriad challenges along the way, but according to Brown, this current roster construction — built around a plethora of big men –presents what he has deemed his “greatest challenge.”
“I know we'll play defense,” Brown told John Schuhmann of NBA.com. “We're designed to play defense. Creating that ecosystem offensively, when you have the dynamics that we have, the skill packages, the size, is the greatest responsibility that I have and the greatest challenge that I have.”
Starting at point guard is the 6-foot-10 Ben Simmons. The team boasts its notorious length as a strength, even as the group is running somewhat counter-culture to how others NBA rosters are being constructed. In addition to the size that Simmons boasts at the point, Joel Embiid has come into his own as a legitimate MVP contender, albeit one that has yet to string together a full season.
Brown sees Embiid as “the best low-post player in the NBA,” going as far to compare the duo of Simmons and Embiid to that of Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — the duo that racked up championships as members of the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1980s.
Whether or not Simmons and Embiid ever ascend to that status, Brown will have his footprint on the career of both men. Losing may have been hard, but Brown now sees that winning, and how to do it consistently, will present his toughest task yet.
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