Brett Brown is in a tough spot, and it’s always been sort of off-limits to criticize him for any of the Sixers’ struggles. After all, for three years he’s been working with the scraped mold from atop the scrap heap and a few prospects. Wins and losses still don’t matter for the Sixers. But lately there’s been a groundswell of criticism that Brown is partly to blame for the late-game struggles that have cost the Sixers at least two wins this season. And though you can’t blame him for Joel Embiid’s three turnovers down the stretch last night and the fact that he seems to be a super talented rookie who develops a case of the yips in tight games – that will work itself out – it is inexcusable that Brown ran the same (terrible) inbounds play twice in a row down one with seven seconds to go, both after timeouts. Just look:

Play 1:

Play 2:

The only difference – that I can see – is that Robert Convington ran slightly different cuts. Eveything else is identical. That’s on the coach. Neither play worked, and the Sixers wound up with the awful Gerald Henderson taking the last shot.

Brown said after the game the players came back to the huddle and said they saw something and wanted to run the same play again. Obviously, that was a bad decision.


Regardless of talent, it’s Brown’s job to put his players in a position to succeed. You can’t excuse these continual late-game failures solely on a lack of talent.