Nick Piccone
Dave Uram is an update anchor and fill in host on SportsRadio 94 WIP. You can follow him on Twitter (@MrUram).
As the temperatures dip in the City of Brotherly Love, Sixers head coach Brett Brown is standing on thin ice that is about to break.
Brown, a member of the prestigious Gregg Popovich coaching tree, who features a delightful Maine and Australian accent mixed together, is unfortunately feeling none of that Philadelphia love.
The man is the losingest head coach in the long, storied history of Philadelphia 76ers basketball, and he’s not even a full four years into the job.
Most coaches in professional sports wouldn’t get to sniff 206 losses in less than four years because they would’ve been fired a long time ago.
Brown elected to join the infamous “tanking” plan by former general manager Sam Hinkie, so he was given a pass for the first three years of his tenure.
However, even the most religious “Hinkie-ites” are beginning to lose their patience. The man simply can’t coach down the stretch. The 0-7 Sixers should’ve won at least three games so far this season. Their latest loss was a game which they led Indiana by six with 1:30 to play. Not only that, Brown’s postgame explanations are so hard to follow these days, it’s officially not English. It’s an entire new language that’s impossible to translate.
Brown is lost. The Sixers are lost. The fanbase, including some “Hinkie-ites,” are lost. The key word is lost, and they do a lot of losing. It’s starting to fall on the very likable Brown. The argument is young talents like Joel Embiid and Jahlil Okafor are being trained to lose and Brown is the essence of failure.
To this point, that is entirely accurate. Yet, the head coach has one last life line, Ben Simmons.
To fire Brown before he gets an opportunity to coach Simmons would be so dirty that a long, hot shower wouldn’t wash off the figurative blood left by the act of letting him go.
It would be a slap in the face to a man who has suffered through three years of the worst front office managing in the history of sports. Hinkie purposely gave Brown a revolving door of borderline talent over a three-year stretch so they could land a No. 1 overall pick.
Well, Brown finally got that pick while Hinkie, who albeit was being demoted, quit before that selection was awarded to the Sixers. It’s not his fault Simmons broke his foot in the preseason. It was bad luck. If anything, it was “The Curse of Sam Hinkie.”
Crazy myths aside, it appears Brown can’t strategize in the clutch, which ultimately should get him the boot. However, the man deserves a chance to prove he possesses the ability to draw up a play with Simmons. The risk of exposing the LSU product to losing isn’t enough to rid a man who has aged worse than a two term President.
His connection to the Simmons family and the loyalty he’s shown to wait for that No. 1 pick is the only reason to keep Brown any further.
Putting him out of his misery at this point is just downright mean.
Searching for wins in the meantime, I have your “Answer.”
Allen Iverson attended 76ers practice on Thursday – yes, we’re talking about practice – and addressed the team. The Basketball Hall of Famer preached playing hard, staying positive and representing the attitude Philadelphia demands.
All of this was expected from the superstar who connected with the people he played for just as well, if not better, than anybody else.
However, what really caught my attention was the footage Comcast SportsNet aired of Iverson during the practice. He seemed engaged, energetic and very happy to be there.
The team MUST hire him. It’s a no-brainer. The fact that he’s not a full time employee at this point is a travesty. It’s hard to believe he would turn something like that down.
The organization needs to persuade him to join them as a full time assistant so he can constantly be around these players.
Iverson has said before that he’s a “basketball genius,” which gathered some laughs by people who don’t think he’s general manager material.
Well, assistant coach is a reasonable position to where he can work his way up if he proves capable of doing so.
Regardless, while Brown embodies losing, Iverson will cancel that out by being the picture of winning. If anything, he can draw up plays down the stretch and just give credit to Brown. The Sixers would probably be better than 0-7.
It shouldn’t be a question what the organization’s next move is – HIRE “THE ANSWER!”
I am truly amazed there hasn’t been more heat on this guy, so FKING what if he is a Poppovich protege, his record speaks for itself.
It must be Sixers apathy to explain this, his record is one of the worst in the four major sports history.