Brett Brown Emphasizing Defense Early on for Sixers
Brett Brown has a lot he needs to lead the Philadelphia 76ers to improve in. One of the things he’s nailing before even training camp starts is defense.
Philadelphia 76ers head coach Brett Brown was given an impossible task when he was offered the head coaching job three seasons ago. He was told to lead his team as best he could, which, for any head coach means to win as many games as possible. Brown was given rosters that could not do that, however, thus, the impossibility.
Over the years, the teams that Brown has led have lost plenty of games, all in the art of Sam Hinkie, who built rosters that likely would lose, setting the team up better for the No. 1 overall draft pick. This season, things are expected to be looking up with Ben Simmons debuting, but nothing is guaranteed.
One of the huge things that the team did wrong was defense. Over the last three seasons, the team has been less than good on the defensive end of the ball, and that has led to the Sixers allowing their opponents to put up insane amounts of points.
Last season, the Sixers were 29th in opposing points per game. The season before, they were 20th, and the season before that, they were 30th. The offense wasn’t great by any means compared to league standards, but it wasn’t as bad as the defense.
Luckily, going into the preseason, Brett Brown and his coaching staff seem to be emphasizing a few key things, defense being one of them. Brown told the media during a recent luncheon that they need to be aggressive and competitive, and that the defense is a huge part of both of those things.
This is very important for the Sixers. The team has lacked a ton in the defensive realm over the last few years, and that’s been what has hurt them in the end of games a lot of the time. For the team to switch gears and say that they will be looking to improve in that area is a huge step.
The coaching staff needs to, during training camp, nail into player’s heads that defense is important. The Sixers do have some solid defensive players — Nerlens Noel, Jerami Grant, and Joel Embiid come to mind — but for every good defensive player (and I should emphasize good, not great) that the Sixers have, there are a few below-average defenders.
While the Sixers do need to focus on extending the abilities of the good defenders, they need to focus on training the below-average defenders even more in order to take the team to the next level defensively.
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