A Brand New Start

By Gordie Jones

This was the sort of change, as the saying went this election year, that everybody could believe in: Elton Brand as a 76er.

No sooner did the veteran power forward sign as a free agent in July than the whole perception of the team changed. Now the Sixers were viewed as a club that could contend, one that could quite possibly come out of the East.

Even Brand’s old friend, Donovan McNabb, was caught up in the hype. He let Brand know that maybe they could plan on two more parades down Broad Street in the near future – one celebrating an Eagles Super Bowl victory, and one celebrating an NBA championship by the Sixers.

“What he told me was, ‘I’ll get the bowls, you bring the chips, “ Brand recalled. Then the Phillies won it all, which seemingly changed what each might bring to the party. Then again, as long as there is a party, there will be nothing to worry about. “It’s funny,” Brand said after practice in early November, less than a week after the Phillies’ parade. “Before the Phils won, it’s like (the fans said), ‘It’s the City of Champions. They’re going to win, you guys are going to win.’ So there’s a lot more pressure on us now. (The fans) like parades. They had fun [that] week.”

He welcomes the expectations, and has from the moment he arrived. Here, everyone said, was the missing ingredient for a promising team. Here was the proven low-post scorer the Sixers had lacked, a guy who had averaged 20.3 points and 10.2 rebounds in nine pro seasons – the first two with Chicago, the last seven with the Clippers.

Nor did anyone seem concerned by the fact that he missed the first 74 games of last season with a torn Achilles tendon, seeing as his norms over the last eight were 17.6 points and eight boards. And when Sixers head coach Maurice Cheeks met with reporters shortly before the beginning of training camp, someone asked whether this was something like 1982, when the Sixers brought in Moses Malone to complement Julius Erving, Andrew Toney, Bobby Jones and – oh, yeah – a point guard named Maurice Cheeks. “That’s a tough question,” Cheeks said.

He went on to say that he sees in Brand the same lunchpail work ethic he saw in Malone. But Moses was a two-time MVP by the time he came to Philadelphia in a trade from Houston, and the Sixers were already an elite team. He made them a championship team. So no, it’s not quite the same. “We just got to the playoffs last year,” Cheeks said. “We’re just still trying to get ourselves to that elite level right now. ... Had we gotten to the Finals and barely missed it, yeah (there would be a similarity). Moses came in, and it was him being fitted as a final piece, because we had already reached the top and just couldn’t get over the top. Moses came and got us over the top. I hope we get to that level where we say (Brand is) the final piece. We’ll just wait for that.”

The Sixers sent Malone to Washington in the summer of 1986, in a deal that brought them Jeff Ruland, an accomplished low-post banger. But Ruland’s knees betrayed him, forcing his premature retirement, and he gravitated toward coaching; he would in time become the head man at his alma mater, Iona College, in New Rochelle, N.Y. And as he was making this transition he came to know Brand, then an up-and-coming player out of Peekskill, N.Y., who played for the same AAU team – Riverside Church, in New York City – that Ruland once had.

“I’ve seen him grow up,” said Ruland, now a Sixers assistant coach. “Nothing he does surprises me. First and foremost, his work ethic is incredible. He’s the first one in here (in the gym), getting his stuff together, lifting and shooting around. He gives you 100 percent in practice.”

Brand spent two years at Duke, reaching the national championship game his second season, then was drafted first overall by the Bulls in 1999. And as his career unfolded, he came to understand what all great players seem to understand – that they need to continually expand their games, continually improve.

In his case, that meant augmenting his low-post arsenal with a reliable jumpshot. “Getting into the league, Michael Jordan and guys like that are saying, ‘You have to have a countermove; you have to have another move,’” Brand said. “Seeing Chris Webber and guys like that in their heyday, when you’re on the box, on the post, you can be a target (for defensive double-teams). (An opponent) can get the ball out of your hands, unless you’re Shaquille O’Neal and you just overpower everybody.

“When you can do other things on the court, you’re a better player. My first few years in the league, that’s when I learned to adapt and get better. In college, that was the first true situation I had to go through, getting doubled a lot. The other teams were effective by using that strategy. But in the league I would get doubled a lot, so that’s when I had to add that facet.”

It took him countless hours in the gym, but by his third or fourth year, he felt comfortable stepping outside and shooting. He remembers that there was one game in particular where he made a clutch jumper late in a game. He doesn’t remember the opponent or the exact circumstances, just the thought that ran through his head. “It was like, ‘Wow, that’s like almost out of my range,’” he said. He wants to continue to expand his game, though Cheeks said it’s pretty complete as it is - more complete than Cheeks realized when he coached against Brand while the Portland boss.

“When you look at Elton from afar, you know he’s a worker,” he said. “He’s a hard worker. ...He’s just a better all-around basketball player than I would have thought, because you give him the ball and get out of his way. But he can pass the ball, obviously he can rebound the ball and he blocks shots. He does a lot of things well.”