Myriad obstacles have been laid in front of Brett Brown during his Philadelphia tenure. We’ve had the Sam Hinkie saga, Bryan Colangelo’s burner gate, Markelle Fultz’s flop, and the rookie injury curse. Those are just four debacles off the top of my head.

You could go more micro if you want, and talk specifically about the thing that has eluded Brown each spring, which is landing the figurative playoff plane with a fully healthy roster. Joel Embiid missed the first two games of the 2017-2018 playoffs with a broken face, then returned to play with a mask. He was ill during the Sixers’ seven-game series with Toronto last year and had a pair of 2-7 shooting nights in which he scored fewer than 13 points. Even this year the Sixers were approaching the postseason not knowing if Ben Simmons, with a back injury, would be available to play.

Then COVID-19 hit, and in a curious twist, it really helped the Sixers. It brought a disappointing season to a screeching halt and diverted attention from a 6th-place team with the worst road record among all 16 playoff squads. It allowed Simmons four additional months to rehab while serving as a reset button, a way to stabilize the plane and get the passengers all buckled in as we extend the landing gear for a July 30th touchdown in sunny Orlando, Florida.

Honest to God, there are a lot of reasons to feel good about the Sixers. They’ll have their starting lineup together for the first time in a long time, the group of Simmons, Embiid, Josh Richardson, Tobias Harris, and Al Horford that only only played 22 games this season while sharing 244 minutes on the court. They were a whopping +44 on the floor together, with an elite 97.1 defensive rating and 8.5 net rating. Those are significant numbers that were hard to sustain due to various injuries, among them Simmons’ back, Embiid’s shoulder, and Richardson’s hamstring.

Everything we’re hearing on the health and fitness front sounds positive. Embiid recently said he feels like he has “something to prove,” while Simmons shared pictures of himself in the gym, and he looks absolutely shredded:

Additionally, you had Shake Milton playing lights out before the postponement, and he gives you a great backup ball-handling option in Orlando, assuming Brown tries to reestablished the starting five that opened the season. Glenn Robinson III and Alec Burks get a chance to hit their individual reset buttons after making difficult in-season transitions following their February trades. Mike Scott was able to step away from an inconsistent shooting year and younger guys like Matisse Thybulle will benefit from additional practice and coaching time that’s hard to come by during the slog of a typical NBA campaign.

More than anything, the malaise hanging over the team for much of the year temporarily subsided as Philadelphia sports fans turned their attention to COVID-19, the recent round of George Floyd protests and demonstrations, and other things that were certainly much more important than basketball.

Some say we’re going to have to apply a lot of asterisks here, as if coaches and players and general managers shouldn’t be evaluated for what happens in Orlando. We’re dealing with extenuating circumstances and resuming a season in a way the NBA has never tried before. For that reason, shouldn’t we throw this all away and just accept the results with a footnote?

I’d actually argue the exact opposite.

We’re putting teams into a Florida vacuum with no home court advantage, no road disadvantage, no fan noise, and no external factors. Assuming players remain COVID-free, this is honestly the most organic way to determine who is good, who is not, who wants to win, and who is only there to collect a pay check. It’s bare bones basketball on a neutral floor, and the winner will be the the best-coached team with the most talent and motivation. That’s why I think making a decision on Brett Brown’s future would be absolutely justified following the Orlando experience, assuming we don’t have a Coronavirus bubble breach.

Seriously though, this is everything Brett Brown should want. He’ll have a healthy team heading into the postseason for the first time ever. The Sixers home court/road court splits will essentially become a wash. He won’t have to win a game seven on the road and he gets a chance to coach without the fan and media noise inside a pseudo-hermetic bubble.

In a recent conference call with media, he described his current tenure in Philadelphia as “incomplete” while saying this, in part:

I think that this team was built for the playoffs. Like every team, you get some unfortunate injury situations. We get that we needed to be better on the road. We were dominant at home. Somewhere in the middle I felt like everything was pointing to us landing the plane, getting good health, and letting that environment be Judgment Day. I feel very confident, and, respectfully, cocky, that we’ve done good work. I’m proud of my coaching staff, Ime Udoka with the defense and Kevin Young and John Bryant and Jim O’Brien is still my touchstone. We’ve done some really great things there.

As it relates to the question about it impacting (me), I don’t know. What I do know is what I just said, to be true, and I’ve been with you and the city for seven years. We’ve gone through Naviculars and pandemics and five GMs and a hundred whatever players and here we are. I feel it’s incomplete. We need to come back to the table, take the team we have, and the work we’ve been putting in, and let that be Judgment Day. Let that environment be ‘you did or you didn’t’ type stuff, and that’s how I approach it.”

Can Orlando serve as Judgment Day? I think so. Most of the limitations Brown has dealt with over the years are now off to the side, and there’s no guarantee next year or the following year that you’ll again have the opportunity to take a complete squad into the postseason. Every team is going to be on a relatively level playing field since they’re all stuck inside the same Disney World vacuum. No long flights, no supermodel girlfriends, no media shoving a microphone in your face. It’s going to be about basketball and that’s pretty much it.

We’re going to learn a lot about this team, the players’ desire to win, and whether or not Brett Brown should get another season at the helm.