Brown's firing comes a day after the Sixers were swept out of the first round of the NBA playoffs by the Boston Celtics, ending a disappointing year for a team that many considered a championship contender at the beginning of the 2019-2020 campaign.
Brett Brown has often frankly talked in recent years about the pressures and expectations that come with coaching the Sixers.
“There’s an expiration date on all of us,” he said last September.
Brown’s expiration date was Monday, when the Sixers fired him as their head coach. ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski first reported the news and the team later released an official statement on Twitter.
He was hired before the 2013-14 season by Sam Hinkie, then the team's general manager.
In his first three campaigns on the job, he earned just 47 triumphs. Hinkie, with a long-term vision in mind, gave Brown a frequently rotating cast of players not meant to win games. Despite that reality, Brown approached his work with a persistent positivity.
A native of South Portland, Maine, Brown started his coaching career in Australia and had experience as a director of player development and assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs. That background helped prepare him for a difficult job.
The 2016-17 Sixers won 28 games, an 18-win improvement on the previous season. Behind young stars Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid, Brown then led the Sixers to back-to-back 50-win seasons for the first time since 1984-86.
Following a bizarre scandal involving president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo and burner Twitter accounts, Brown assumed the role of interim general manager in June of 2018 until the team hired Elton Brand.
The Sixers will now search for a new voice to guide Simmons, Embiid and a group of complementary players that did not support the team's stars well this past season.
