Draft picks weren’t the only important additions that the 76ers made to the franchise at the end of last June. Days after selecting Rookie of the Year candidate Jahlil Okafor and promising power forward Richaun Holmes, the team finalized another key transaction before the month came to a close.Seeking to further bolster their resources in the realm of sports performance, the Sixers successfully recruited Dr. David T. Martin to be the club’s new Director of Performance Research and Development. The American-born Martin had spent the previous 20 years serving as a Senior Sport Scientist at the forward-thinking, government-funded Australian Institute of Sport, where he garnered international acclaim. In announcing on June 29th that Martin had joined his basketball operations staff, General Manager Sam Hinkie said in a statement that “none” of the Sixers’ investments in sports science compared to the hiring of Martin. Hinkie, who spent a year becoming familiar with Martin and his work before offering him a position, described Martin as a “scientist” who was also the “coach to some of the world’s highest performing, most resilient athletes and coaches.” Throughout training camp, pre-season, and now regular season, Martin has been ever-present around the Sixers, whether at their practice facility at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, down at The Center, or on the road. He travelled with the team to Washington, D.C. on Friday, February 5th, and also to their previous away outing on January 27th versus Detroit.”I look at myself as almost like a head helper,” Martin told Sixers Radio Network broadcaster Tom McGinnis in an interview that aired during halftime of the Pistons game. “I’ve got a great opportunity to try to help the 76ers right now.”He continued, “Helping is a really vague term. People say, ‘Head helper, what does that mean?’ You kind of just help in all the complex areas that these NBA basketball players are struggling with. You might be trying to help them understand how to manage their training load. We just had a big laceration with T.J. McConnell [January 24th against Boston]. A lot of discussions how to keep it clean, how to work with the medical staff. You talk about things like travel fatigue. Right now, we’ve got a couple guys out with illness. So a lot of discussions of how do you help guys who are sick. You also have a lot of development issues, [like] guys trying to improve their shot under pressure. How do you help them?”
During his two decades at the A.I.S., Martin was instrumental in building up the country’s Olympic and Paralympic programs through advanced tactics aimed at maximizing the output of an athlete. These methods were rooted in science and technology, but were also geared towards generating a positive psychological byproduct as well. The video below details an A.I.S. cycling initiative that Martin had a role in developing.
“It’s a job where I’ve been really lucky,” said Martin in his conversation with McGinnis, as he reflected on his endeavors in the sports science and performance field. “I’ve been down in Australia for 20 years. I was attracted down there because of their passion for trying to improve human performance. And now I get to come back to the United States with a young family, and we get to let them experience U.S. high school, whereas at the same time, I get to link up with Brett Brown, and look at all these really exciting questions that are tied into high performance sport with the NBA.”An aspect of sports development and training that greatly interests Martin is determining how to best keep athletes motivated. “It’s a really tough industry to try to grow up in,” Martin said. “You’re constantly being judged. You’re good, you’re bad. It’s black, it’s white. What we’re trying to do is say, be patient, set goals, don’t give up on yourselves. If something’s not working, don’t get mad. Get even, get smart, get clever. We’re trying to bring where contemporary ideas in sports science are, and bring them to problems that some people think are insurmountable. We’re trying to say there’s so much you can improve.”In addition to assisting all active members of the Sixers’ roster, Martin also has another chief responsibility. He’s been entrusted with directing the right foot rehabilitation of Joel Embiid, the third overall selection from the 2014 NBA Draft. “With a guy like Embiid, we got to make sure he’s eating right, sleeping right, taking care of his body so that his bones are healthy,” Martin explained to McGinnis. “Once that happens, we got to start talking about how he loads himself. If he loads himself right, who knows? Eight, 10, 12 years as a franchise player, that’s what we all want.””We’re trying to bring bone specialists, and people that understand training load management and periodization. We’re trying to bring in dietitians. We’re trying to bring in specialists from a whole number of different areas to guide these guy, and not just tell them what to do, but create an environment that makes it easy for them to do the right thing.”Brett Brown has been pleased with the perspective that Martin has brought to the Sixers. The two share a connection via the Australian Institute of Sport, which Brown was also involved with during his stint coaching basketball in Australia.”I’m particularly influenced by his background,” Brown said on Saturday, before his short-handed Sixers knocked off Brooklyn, 103-98. “He’s been to five Olympic Games. He’s done this a long time. He is world-renowned. I think that his words account for something, especially with me. I think the suggestions that he makes comes with years of experience, and is very clever in some ways in different ways to view the NBA. He’s been a huge addition to our program.”
