Brett Brown visited the podcast of ESPN's Zach Lowe and had an hour-long conversation that ranged from working as an AT&T account executive in his early twenties to trying to work Jahlil Okafor at the four and Nerlens Noel at the five.
It's a great hour if you have a chance to listen to the whole thing.
In trying to pick a part of the conversation to highlight, Brown on the current decision making hierarchy with Sixers after the team added Jerry Colangelo stood out.
"Everybody seems to want to go, ‘who makes the final decision?’" Brown starts.
"We saw it in Philadelphia with Chip Kelly and Howie Roseman. We’ve seen how that can be a wedge. People like controversy. Our species lately likes controversy. They like asking those questions, in my opinion, at times, that produce controversy. I understand it. It’s part of the landscape."
"This is being built on a very collaborative level where we all, if we’re big boys, can step back and say, ‘I can help him and he can help me. As an organization, what’s going to make us better?’ We’ve gone through three years of immense pain. You could argue, in a different world, that it was gutsy to do what we did. Was it hard, was it easy? I don’t know. Just experiencing the rebuild, not having veterans, going with 20-year-olds, trying to figure out who are keepers, trying to pair two Five-men up on how to grow Jahlil and Nerlens, redshirting Dario Saric and Joel Embiid, we missed a whole draft.
"I applaud our owners for having the guts to be able to follow a plan," Brown said.
NBA
"This is still a procedure that we’re all going through. Sam is the General Manager. Sam is the president. We’re all in this together trying to add our experiences and opinions."
Other interesting topics discussed: Jahlil guarding fours and Nerlens guarding the rim, how he worked as an AT&T account executive who gave up the high-paying career (six figures!) to move to Australia and pursue a dream, how he negotiates his own contracts, how he got involved in coaching in Australia because he was a pick-up game stud, how he met his wife near the Great Barrier Reef, how he often plays alongside his son in some of the best pick-up games in Philly, on being the son of a legendary New England basketball coach, and much, much more.