Watching Sixers basketball can be difficult these days. That’s why when the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat kicked off Thursday night’s national doubleheader on TNT, Brett Brown felt compelled to watch.
Last year, Brown was sitting on the Spurs’ bench as an assistant coach when they fell to the Heat in seven games of a classic NBA Finals.
Seeing the latest rematch brought a flurry of emotions for the Sixers' head coach.
“It was not so much this is what I had, but this is what I want,” Brown said. “That is what I want to help create. You see a team that plays as a team first. The layer underneath that is they really pass the ball.”
The Spurs average the second-highest number of assists per game at 24.9, behind only the Atlanta Hawks. In their previous game before facing the Heat, the Spurs registered 39 assists on 43 field goals in a 122-101 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. Those 39 assists were the third most by any team in a game this season, and only Charlotte has had a higher percentage of assist to field goals in a contest.
Seeing that type of flowing and effective play, it is understandable why Brown might look at his former employer with a bit of jealousy.
“They have a prideful defensive identity and a free-flowing offense all under the roof of some really good players and a really good coach,” Brown said. “There is just such a strong chemistry dynamic that I am so jealous of that you want for this city and this team.”
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The Spurs have proven to be a perennial power despite some of the moving parts involved with the running of an NBA franchise. Despite some turnover, Brown says there has always been one constant during the Spurs' run of success.
“Shooting,” he said. “It started sprinkling shooters around David [Robinson] and Timmy [Duncan]. Then they got into letting Manu [Ginobili] drive and we had this space around him with shooters. Then we pick-and-rolled Tony [Parker] and we had to space around that.
“The thing that kept it all together for all those years was having shooters.”
The Sixers will have to find shooters in the future because they currently rank dead last in the league in three-point percentage at 30.7. Still, identifying areas of weakness is a major part of the rebuilding process.