PHILADELPHIA, PA – During his tenure as the Sixers’ head coach, Brett Brown has been nothing short of a clear communicator. Whether handling players, speaking to the press, or interacting with season-ticket holders and other fans, Brown consistently gets his message across in an accessible, direct, and genuine manner. With time running short before the onset of Thursday’s 3:00 PM EST NBA trade deadline, Brown has found, through a decade and a half spent in the league, that straight talk can be an effective way to cope with some of the uncertainty that accompanies this juncture of the season.”Play. You just play,” Brown said Wednesday of the mindset he’s sought to instill in his team. He talked to reporters following the Sixers’ first practice back from the All-Star Game break. “This is my 15th year doing this. You just come and you have a great practice. Whatever will be, will be, and they have to back themselves. They’ve got to not play, live afraid.”Since Brown joined the Sixers in August of 2013, the organization has been active at the trade deadline. The following winter, the club sent Evan Turner and Lavoy Allen to the Indiana Pacers, and Spencer Hawes to the Los Angeles Clippers. Both moves were made on February 20th, the final day that swaps were permitted.On last February’s deadline day, the Sixers shipped Michael Carter-Williams to the Milwaukee Bucks, and K.J. McDaniels to the Houston Rockets.”I talk freely with them,” said Brown, as he went on to discuss some advice he’s shared with players. “There are people that are going to be mentioned in trades. There are people that are fighting for contracts. Just as your coach and your friend, let me give you two things.””You have to be incredibly competitive, and you have to be a great ‘day-to-day’ guy in the NBA. If you’re up and down, and you don’t navigate our world – which is difficult – from a day-to-day perspective, if you’re missing any of those two things, good luck to you. You’re rolling the dice.” The point Brown was looking to make? Focus on controllable factors. “People hope you’re competitive, people hope you have high character, people hope you’re an athlete, people hope you have high basketball intellect,” Brown said about what he’s learned over the course of his stint in the NBA. “But you better be highly competitive, and you better be a great day-to-day guy, so let’s get going. That’s what we’re going to try to walk down. We’ve got 29 games left, and that’s our marching orders.”An important, new dynamic related to the Sixers and the forthcoming trade deadline is that the front office is able to tap into Jerry Colangelo’s 40-plus years of professional hoops wisdom. The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer was brought on as the Sixers’ Chairman of Basketball Operations in December. “We talk often,” said Brown, referring to his relationship with Colangelo. “We talk enough, and we talk often. We communicate as an organization with [managing owner] Josh [Harris] and [co-managing owner] David [Blitzer] and [President of Basketball Operations and General Manager] Sam [Hinkie] and Jerry. We have conference calls, and discussions have been ongoing for several months now. It’s just free conversation. It’s extremely collaborative. It’s extremely transparent. Nobody holds opinions or punches. It’s fantastic having that group together in the forum that we genuinely have. We talk freely, and we need to to grow this.”The first byproduct of this collaborative effort was that Colangelo and Hinkie orchestrated a December 24th trade for Ish Smith. If there’s any one, single player on the Sixers – or in the entire NBA, for that matter – who knows what it’s like to be traded, it’s the sixth-year point guard. Smith has been part of six separate swaps since breaking into the league as an undrafted rookie free agent with Houston in 2010. On Wednesday, he recalled the first exchange he was involved in, which occurred back in February of 2011. Smith said, “I was laying in my bed, and getting ready for practice or something like that was going to happen the next day, and I got a phone call at 2:55 PM, and me and Shane Battier got traded to Memphis. That was the first time I realized it was real. This is not just, ‘I’m going to be in Houston for the rest of my career.'”Smith, a rookie at the time, credited the then-32 year old Battier for helping him adjust after the Rockets completed their transaction with the Grizzlies. Smith now has no problem sharing his experiences with younger, curious players.”For me, if they asked me any questions about it, I’m most definitely going to tell them,” explained Smith. “But for me, it was just trying to get to the next team, and hopefully that was the right team for me.”
To date, Smith and the Sixers have proven to be a productive fit. By mid-Thursday afternoon, the team will have had to make similar decisions about the other components that currently make up its roster.
