After giving his players Saturday off, Sixers head coach Brett Brown held a three-hour session at the team’s practice facility on Sunday afternoon.

Extended sessions have been par for the course since the first day of training camp 12 days ago. Coach Brown said then that he hopes to treat the entire month leading up to the team’s regular season opener against Indiana on October 29 as if it were an extension of camp.

“I know that we want to practice hard, and I know that we want to be efficient with our time and use it wisely,” Brown said of the tempo of his practices so far this preseason. “There’s a lot to put in and we’ve gone quite slow.”

The focus of the practices have remained consistent – getting back in transition, closing out on shooters, good help defense vs. bad help defense, making proper rotations, and the like. Brown has tried to keep things simple as he looks for his young team to master the fundamental principles of his defensive system.

“For the most part, they haven’t missed a beat,” he said. “I’m trying to really teach these guys slowly and do the best job we can as a staff. Where it’s not calculus, it’s just addition right now, fundamental stuff. [We want to] grow it at a pace that will help them and not dizzy them with information.”

Five preseason games remain between now and the six-day break that precedes the regular season. On Tuesday, the Sixers travel to Syracuse, New York to take on the Knicks.

Injury Update

After missing Friday’s game against the Timberwolves with a right quad contusion, Nerlens Noel was a full participant on Sunday. Noel told reporters that he suffered the injury in the opening minutes of the team’s preseason opener against the Celtics on Monday but was able to play through it during that game and the team’s home preseason opener against Charlotte on Wednesday.

Hollis Thompson suffered a corneal abrasion in his left eye against the Hornets that forced him to miss all but the game’s opening four minutes. He was held out of practice on Thursday and didn’t travel with the team to Minnesota on Friday. He was not with the team at practice on Sunday, and Coach Brown told reporters that he believes the second-year swingman is about a week away from returning to action.

Jerami Grant (right ankle sprain), Michael Carter-Williams (right shoulder injury), Joel Embiid (right foot injury), and Jason Richardson (left knee injury) also did not practice.

#BrotherlyLove

On Sunday night, the Sixers’ South Philadelphia neighbors, the Philadelphia Eagles, take on the division-rival New York Giants at home in primetime. After practice, big man Nerlens Noel said that he and fellow rookie Joel Embiid are planning on attending the game together.

Noel comes from a football background; both his older brothers played the sport collegiately – Rodman Noel is a linebacker at NC State and Jim Noel played defensive back at Boston College from 2009-12. In fact, a then 6’8” Nerlens Noel was the quarterback of his high school’s freshman team before giving up the sport as a sophomore to focus exclusively on basketball.

Growing up in Cameroon, Joel Embiid played football of the association variety. Since arriving in Philadelphia, though, the 20-year-old seven-footer has taken to watching the Eagles, even live tweeting the team’s Week Four meeting with the San Francisco 49ers.

“It’s a crazy atmosphere being at an Eagles game,” said Noel. “[The way the Eagles teammates stood up for each other] during the brawl when they played the Redskins, that’s real… You see what Philly’s about.”