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Joel Embiid Shouts Out the in-Attendance Brett Brown After Historic 70-Point Night
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Brett Brown is a Spurs assistant and therefore was in attendance when Joel Embiid dropped 70 on Monday night. Embiid said this about his former coach after the game:
“I’m kind of glad I did it in front of him, so he can kind of see the product of, you know, what he created.”
A very special moment between Joel Embiid and his first-ever Sixers head coach, Brett Brown. 🥰 pic.twitter.com/IUqwQgCP0C
— NBC Sports Philadelphia (@NBCSPhilly) January 23, 2024
That was cool to see. Brown was Embiid’s first NBA coach, they navigated the process era together, and then reached the doorstep of the Eastern Conference Finals in that Toronto series.
There’s a portion of the fan base that thinks Brown stinks, and didn’t run the right offense, or didn’t unlock Embiid, or some version of that. That’s fine if that’s your stance, but the counterpoint is that Brett was trying to work a system that included Ben Simmons, so he came up with motion offense with pindown screens and DHOs and a lot of swinging the ball around with a non-shooting 6’10” point guard. Embiid was in his early 20s, an All-Star and a defensive stud with a knack for picking up untimely injuries. And he really didn’t grow into this elite, multi-level scorer until after the ill-fated Al Horford season, which was followed by Simmons’ departure.
So you can have whatever opinion you want to have about Brett as a coach, and maybe he didn’t get the most out of Joel when he was in charge, but regardless, it’s nice to see a moment like that in 2024.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com