Nick Piccone
The new practice facility for the Sixers that’s currently being built in Camden is often forgotten about. That’s most likely because it’s not near completion yet, and maybe there’s some sort of stigma attached to it because it’s located in New Jersey*!
But there’s a lot to be said about how this new facility will aim to improve professional basketball life not just for the players, but for everybody in the Sixers organization. From the front office to the coaching staff to the players, this new facility is exactly what the organization has needed for a long, long time.
Bob Cooney of the Daily News recently talked to Sixers head coach Brett Brown about the new facility and what it means to the team. It’s much more than just another building.
In my San Antonio life, I came in and we opened the door to a brand-new facility on my first day in 2002,” said Brown. “So they said to me that I was the director of player development and I was going to open a brand-new facility. So the parallels I feel now as a head coach is you learned the importance of having your own facility. You learned guys feeling like they have their own home. There are lockers there. There are restaurants there. There’s hydration and all the physical therapy stuff. There are courts and baskets and coaches. It’s just one-stop shopping. They have access to it 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s theirs.
Sounds great in theory if you’re a player. Need to work on that jump shot? Go to work. They don’t have to wait around and be cleared to go onto the PCOM courts. Their families can be there. I’m assuming they’ll have rules so they can avoid an Adam LaRoche situation, but that’s still pretty awesome.
Since Brown opened the Spurs’ facility in 2002, so he’s familiar with how something like this will affect the players.
In San Antonio, we grew that mindset and mentality. Here, it was important, the actual design of the court, the way it’s going to be spaced out. You can walk in the door and you have 10 baskets that are mutually exclusive from one another in that they don’t overlap. You want to work on three-point shooting, to take it to an extreme, at every basket, no problem. You’re not going to run out of space. Our world at (Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine), where NBA coaching staffs are growing and the responsibility to develop has always been there with us, it was a challenge at PCOM because of the space. You couldn’t work on six baskets with people shooting threes. Here, I think it’s going to feel spaced, because it is. It will feel like we can teach better, because it’s not distractions with sound and lack of space and so on. You can really become a better teacher. It’s a better teaching environment. Development kicks in in a much larger way with the ability to become better teachers.”
Now, if Brown and his coaching staff have more room and more time to teach, then the players become better as a result, and we see a better product on the court that could be conducive to winning. All things interlock here.
A few of the amenities the players will enjoy are two regulation basketball courts on the first floor with a hot and cold tub with a lap pool and weight room surrounding it. There will be a video room with many televisions and a huge locker room, just to name a few. The second floor will boast a restaurant (!), a patio overlooking Camden, a game room and hydration bar. I want to live here.
It’s much more than just a building.
Though, I have a feeling if the Sixers were in the Finals right now, you and I probably wouldn’t care about a practice facility. After all, we’re talkin’ ’bout a practice facility.
The facility should be open sometime this calendar year. You can keep up with all of the updates here.
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[*I’m not really sure why New Jersey gets a bad rap. Yes, I know, our governor is Chris Christie. But not all of us voted for him. And there’s the shore. The ultimate trump card. I was born in Philly, moved to Jersey when I was six years old, and moved back to PA when I was 24. I love Jersey. I love Philly. One’s not better than the other. It’s this weird battle for some reason. The Flyers practice in Voorhees and nobody seems to have a problem with that. Can’t we all just get along?]