BUILDING AN OFFENSE

The Sixers' roster is full of talent, but it still provides challenges for Brett Brown.

Turning to your roster this season, you might have to go back to Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to find a similar pairing of fast-break point guard and low-post center. How do you handle that unique challenge?

You just mentioned the team that interests me, to say what did they do so well and what can I learn from them, when you got Magic and you got Kareem. You got a fast-break, big point guard ...

And they don't, at first glance, complement each other very well, especially when you put them in today's NBA, with the need for floor spacing.

At times, they don't. So you got to figure out that ecosystem. And I think, completely, that it rests on the point guard more than it rests on the big, because they drive the car, they have the ball. And in Ben, we got one of the fastest guards in the NBA. And oh by the way, he's 6-foot-10. He's a tank. He's a big man.

And then you have the best low-post player in the NBA, in my opinion, in Joel Embiid at 7-foot-2. And so what parallels, what historical examples might you learn from? Well, maybe the Magic and Kareem days are something you got to study. They were quite big, with James Worthy and Byron [Scott] was a big guard.

There are things you can learn from, but this might be my greatest challenge. I know we'll play defense. We're designed to play defense. Creating that ecosystem offensively, when you have the dynamics that we have, the skill packages, the size, is the greatest responsibility that I have and the greatest challenge that I have.

At what point do you really evaluate where you are with the offense and whether it's good enough?

It starts ... It doesn't start. It's always there. You're always thinking about "Will this work in Game 7 with three minutes left?" Where you end, you should start.

I've been privileged to see championship basketball and you're always reminded how things just get stripped down and you're naked. It's bare and it's simple. It's always about players and rarely about plays. It's about concepts and fundamentals, not because "Ear tug, 32 twist" is a great play. Over a seven-game series, you're not going to fool anybody with plays. So I completely believe in that. I live by it. That is the litmus test of which I judge.

When I have a day off after a game, I normally just watch the game in flow. And it takes me anywhere from 8-10 hours, when you mark a game. And you think and it pivots you off into development or concepts or fundamentals or things I got to do with messaging to our young players, trying to connect and stay with them so they know their head coach hasn't forgotten about them.

But yesterday [after the Sixers edged the Hawks in the third game of the season], I go through and I just watch our defense -- I normally don't break the game up like this -- and as I watch our defense, I'm like, "OK, if you put me in a closet and drug me out and you watched us play defense, for the most part, I'm proud." We play hard. I think that we will arrive in April where we need to arrive.

“We know we have a special team this year and we can do something special.” - @BenSimmons25pic.twitter.com/yrEFAOwsTF — Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) October 29, 2019

We're learning about Al Horford as a rim protector. I'm learning about J-Rich [Josh Richardson] guarding point guards. I'm learning about people's switchability vs. I got to keep them connected on somebody like I had to do with J.J. [Redick]. You learn, but I feel like we're trending where I want to go.

Then you take me out of that closet and you put me in front of a video and say, "Here's the team after three games offensively," and I'm crushed. I don't like what I saw that night. I did like what I saw against Boston, in Detroit. I didn't, at all, like what I saw against Atlanta.

So there's no finite date. I hope, in my own mind, I'm growing it and coaching it the way I want, and shaping it in the first third [of the season]. But it's never-ending. It keeps coaches up at night. I think the offensive design of our team needs to be well thought through, from my standpoint.

On opening night you talked about developing Furkan Korkmaz into a high-volume 3-point shooter ...

"Grow a bomber."

𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐅𝐔𝐑𝐊𝐀𝐍 𝐊𝐈𝐃𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 pic.twitter.com/f52lsN1tp3 — Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) November 3, 2019

Right. Is there a similar view in regard to pushing Richardson and/or Tobias Harris into a playmaking role?

With Josh, especially. I look at Tobias as, kind of, my new J.J. I want him really hunting threes. I want him thinking that way. With J-Rich, you go through the process of ... I believe that, when mid-April comes, there's a significant chance that he will be the back-up point guard. We did it with Manu all my years with Pop.

And if I'm thinking like that, why wouldn't I just do it now? I'm not married to that, but I opted to do that at the start of the year. I think that he is a capable - and at times more than capable - and emerging pick-and-roll type of player. He's long enough to see over it. People don't always go under it, so there's somebody there to actually screen. I think his evolution can be very helpful in that particular area.

When he comes off a pick-and-roll, he sees the whole floor, the back line of the defense?

He does. And he can go left-handed or right-handed. He's actually better left, probably, where he can pick off a corner if Joel rolls and they tag. I think that his thought process is beyond a two-man or three-man.

One final, slightly off topic question: Are you surprised that Tim Duncan is an assistant coach?

No. Not at all. At this stage of Pop's career and with the loss of Ime [Udoka, now an assistant with Brown in Philadelphia] and Ettore Messina going to Italy, I think Pop is -- and I understand this -- trying to find allies and a comfort level while still achieving an NBA coaching staff. And he knocked it out of the park. You got Tim Duncan coming in.

Five-time champion Tim Duncan has a new role with the Spurs this season.

I think Timmy probably felt a responsibility, more than "Yeah, I'm dying to be an NBA coach" type of rationale. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong. But because Timmy's good people and he loves Pop, I bet there was some of that in his thinking. And for those reasons, I'm not surprised.

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John Schuhmann is a senior stats analyst for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.

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