Man, was it nice to see a first half the likes of which the 76ers put together Tuesday in Tinseltown.
Of course, the return of Joel Embiid was big, and welcomed. All he did was score 15 points in the first quarter, en route to racking up 19 by the break.
Then, there were the 76 points the Sixers exploded for through the first 24 minutes of play. The total was a season-high for the team in any half this season, and marked just the fourth time in 25 years the club registered that many points before intermission.
The numbers, though, that interested Brett Brown the most from the first half of the Sixers’ 119-113 victory over the LA Clippers was that his squad assisted on 20 of its 28 field goals, good for 71 percent.
Two days earlier, in a rough loss to the Portland Trail Blazers, the Sixers generated just 18 assists on 34 baskets, an uncharacteristically low rate for a group that tops the Eastern Conference in assist percentage (65.1).
That the Sixers bounced back quickly from the Portland game was obviously important, and refreshing. That they did so by reclaiming a crucial part of their identity seemed to hearten the head coach the most.
“What is most – by a mile – lately on my mind is the growth of a team, and the cohesion and the ability to share in somebody else’s success, the ability to communicate candidly, and coexist,” Brown told reporters following Tuesday’s win at STAPLES Center. “That’s all I care about that.”
Well, then. What metric is better suited to quantify the essence of a team’s continuity and togetherness than its effectiveness sharing the basketball?
The concept of the “pass is king,” which Brown so often references both internally with his players and publicly when speaking with the media, represents the aorta of his coaching philosophy.
He is especially vigilant of this tenet these days, as the Sixers, despite their overall success, work through an ongoing personnel reboot of sorts on the heels of the Jimmy Butler trade.
Brown takes a high assist percentage performance as further evidence of the roster coming together.
“You don’t just click your heels, throw Jimmy Butler in, and everybody’s going to be playing the same way and style. It doesn’t work like that,” he said. “My job is to grow a team. Playing together is always, by a longshot, what’s most on my mind.”
The parts, the Sixers feel, are there. It’s just a matter of smoothing certain things out.
“That’s why the 20 passes was king,” Brown said. “That’s what interests me – playing together, sharing the ball, acknowledging an assist, lifting somebody off the floor, sharing in somebody else’s success. That’s what makes coaching enjoyable also.”
As Brown put it Tuesday in Los Angeles, in the coaching profession, the fight for the “soul” of a team is real, and constant.
Sure, moving the ball is critical to the design of the Sixers’ offensive style of play, but the significance Brown attaches to passing clearly goes way deeper than that.
It’s a cultural pillar he’s clung to since his earliest days with the franchise, and believes it will continue to serve the Sixers’ best interests.
These ain’t no 10 cent dimes.
Why the 20 assists in last night’s big first half stood out the most to Brett Brown:
“The [pass] is king. That’s what interests me – playing together, sharing the ball, sharing in somebody else’s success.” pic.twitter.com/u1JR4eQvWN
— brianseltzer (@brianseltzer) January 2, 2019
“We’ve come from great depths to arrive here,” Brown said, alluding to the Sixers’ ascent the past three seasons, “and we want more. We do not want to disrespect the effort and work that many people have shared in trying to grow something.”
Source: “Los Angeles” – Google News