After losing to the Atlanta Hawks in their February debut on Wednesday, the 76ers will look to move forward by recapturing the form with which they played throughout the better part of January. They won four games in the month, and made gains defensively, on the perimeter, and, most notably, in point guard performance.

By no means has the impact of Ish Smith been lost on Brett Brown. Smith started all 14 of the Sixers’ January outings, and manufactured 8.1 assists per game for the month, an average that was fifth-best among all NBA players. Still, Brown believes there’s another factor responsible for explaining why the club has been moving along as of late.

“A lot of people, some fairly, point to Ish as the thing that tripped all of this. That is not entirely true,” Brown said Wednesday of the point guard who’s averaged 15.4 points per game since being reacquired by the Sixers on December 24th. “There is improvement in all of the players, and I think in all of the schemes we’ve gotten better because it has been so vanilla.”

Brown feels that the straightforward nature of the Sixers’ offense and defense has caused a positive dynamic to emerge among his young players.

“It’s just more accountable, it’s a freer conversation because they at times can beat me to it where they know they’ve made a mistake,” explained Brown. “A teammate can react to a teammate where they know they’ve made a mistake. When you get to that type of system, where the players can coach the players, and that level of accountability is moving forward as it is with us, then I think schematically you can improve.”

In addition to an increase in accountability, the Sixers’ roster is also now experiencing greater stability than it has featured in the past. So far, the team has parted ways with just two players - Phil Pressey and Tony Wroten - who had appeared in a regular season game. This time last year, the Sixers had already moved on from six players that had suited up for at least one outing.

“Just everybody has played a big role in what we’ve done so far, and we built upon it, and we see what we’re capable of, so guys are really locked into what we’ve been doing,” said Robert Covington, discussing the benefits of the Sixers’ continuity. “We’re going out there each and every night and showing what we’re capable of, and doing it on a consistent basis, and guys are giving great effort. That’s one thing we build off of. We see it, because all the games that we’ve played, there’s been so much growth from it from when we first started, and now that we’ve continued to get better and grow throughout the season. We just got to continue to build.”

Friday’s visit to the Washington Wizards will give Covington and the Sixers their next opportunity to pursue that mission.

