For the Sixers to be successful, Brett Brown says the team has to play with an uptempo, high-pace offensive game.
During the last two seasons that meant shoot first and ask questions later.
But heading into his third year with the Sixers and the epic rebuilding process, Brown wants to be a little smarter about the shot selection. No, that doesn’t mean the Sixers will stop playing uptempo, high-octane offense.
Instead, Brown wants to Sixers to at least think before they shoot long three-pointers early in the shot clock.
“It’s something I have to coach our group better on,” Brown said after Friday’s practice at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. “We worked on it (Friday) and there is a fine line in developing their three-point shots — and they practiced a lot over the summer — and when you use that privilege. I think it’s the hardest thing for me coaching is playing good-shot/bad-shot cop. When these guys are open, I want them to feel comfortable to shoot it. Then you get into time and score where we haven’t scored in multiple possessions.”
Two years ago, the Sixers led the NBA with 99.2 possessions per 48 minutes and last year they were sixth with 95.7 possessions per 48 minutes. However, over that span, the Sixers were the worst three-point shooting team, the worst foul-shooting team and committed the most turnovers. Brown has claimed his team was the worst shooting team “in the history of the sport.”
So to improve the Sixers spent all summer working on shooting and while Brown doesn’t want to slow down his team too much, he wants a little more careful consideration into when and who shoots.
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“You look at (Robert) Covington and Isaiah (Canaan) and Hollis (Thompson) and you turn your head a little bit more with those guys because they are natural shooters,” Brown said. “JaKarr (Sampson) and Jerami (Grant), you have to coach them on areas of the floor that best suit them. Years ago [as an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs] we only let (Bruce) Bowen shoot corner threes and we did not encourage him out of the corners.
“So that part of the program is growing and needs to grow, otherwise it just ends up as a ratty gym. But I will say to you it’s one of my great challenges and coaching it.”
It’s not just three-point shooting, either. Brown has encouraged power forward Nerlens Noel to extend his offensive reach a bit farther out from the paint and develop a pick-and-pop game that future Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett mastered. However, in the first two games of the exhibition season, Noel hasn’t put up any mid-range jump shots.
The same goes for rookie Jahlil Okafor, who Brown saw as primarily a low-block player. However, in the preseason game in Washington Okafor hit his first five shots, including three longer than 14 feet and only one at the rim.
With Okafor’s versatility at the high post, Brown has rethought some of his ideas of tethering his 19-year-old big man to the low post.
“It’s taking these young guys who play downhill and play fast and have just come out of the summer where they put up thousands and thousands and thousands of shots and learning where can you play with your toy — it ain’t in the kitchen,” Brown said. “This is a problem and it’s a fine line to walk as a coach sometimes.”
How does Brown coach it? Easy, he says. Brown just uses the research and analytics gathered by the team that proves one basic basketball axiom that he’s preached from his first day on the job …
The pass is king.
“When I talk about offense I say, ‘The pass is king,’ and I say it all the time,” Brown said. “So if I can avoid good-shot/bad-shot cop, and get them to understand what [a good shot is] and show them evidence that the pass is king, then you don’t need to have [an All-Star] point guard because you have a team.”
And it’s a fine line, too. The pass is king only when the pass gets to where it was intended. That means the Sixers have to do a better job at taking care of the ball. Two years ago, the Sixers had the most possessions per 48 minutes in the NBA, but they took only 87.2 shots per game. That’s 12 possessions in which the Sixers didn’t even attempt a shot, a number that increased to 13 last season.
Yes, the Sixers still want a high quantity of shots, but the quality of those shots will have to improve, too.
“It’s a team mentality,” Brown said.