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So we've been Brett Brown fans almost since the get-go, though our admiration for him has been a bit more muted than, say, our Sam Hinkie fandom. That may have to change after this tremendous Zach Lowe interview he did with the Sixers head coach before last night's Sixers-Knicks game. Read it. Read all of it.
But here's the most insightful part, referring to the three-point revolution in the NBA:
Lowe: You’ve mentioned the 3-point shot. The league takes more and more every season, and Houston’s D-League team is taking like 50 a game — and convincing some people that is the future of the sport. Do you agree with that? Do you like that direction?
Brown: Everybody in analytics tells me it is, but I don’t like it. There is no stat that talks about the disappointment and frustration of an interior player not getting touches while running rim to rim to rim to rim. Look at the extreme of last [Thursday's] game, with Houston and Oklahoma City.
Lowe: Seventy-something points in the first half, 19 in the second.
2014 NBA Draft
Brown: I’m just so curious to see what happened. In my opinion, it just ends up a carnival. I don’t see it [as the future]. And I could be entirely wrong. You have to embrace the 3. We embrace the 3. We’ve embraced it as much as anybody, I hope. We’ve encouraged Spencer [Hawes] and Thaddeus [Young] — dragged them out and spaced the floor. I think the future of the game is the Ryan Anderson type. One of your bigs has to be able to do that. But to just scream up and down the floor, and jack 3s — I don’t like that.
That's why it's not just stats and it's not just scouting. You have to consider both to be successful -- hard not to be so confident in the front office in place here. And the Ryan Anderson line is particularly interesting for what the Sixers will be looking for this offseason.
Urging you to read the whole thing because it's the best sit-down interview with a coach I've ever read. It's such a goddamn treat to have a coach as candid and thoughtful as him. But man, they really blew the coaching search by taking their time, didn't they? *farts on media*
And, as a bonus, a magnificent quote about Gregg Popovich:
Lowe: Tell me one big-picture basketball thing on which you and Pop just fundamentally disagree.
Brown: Pop was always wanting to have people disagree with him. Sometimes you’d disagree even if you didn’t, because you knew he wanted it. He doesn’t want yes men around him.
He's a GOD.
