Bob Ford: Towering dilemma: Jay Wright talks Okafor, Noel with Brett Brown

Brett Brown and Jay Wright were sitting in the front seat of the bus as it crossed back from the West Bank and into Israeli territory in late July. They had just given a basketball clinic in Ramallah and were returning to do the same in Jerusalem as part of an outreach program sponsored by a group called PeacePlayers International. At the checkpoint, two young Israeli soldiers boarded the bus and this part was not about games.tmpplchld “People come through and they’re checking passports and there’s two 18-year-olds with AK-47’s. You know, they just want to keep the bus organized, and you pay attention,” Brown said last week. “To experience those environments, you get a little closer.”tmpplchld Brown and Wright are the two most high-profile basketball coaches in Philadelphia. They had met before, but never spent real time together until both agreed to take part in the Middle East clinic. They took in the history and tried to spread the word of peace and understanding through playing together instead of fighting apart, but they also did what basketball coaches do to pass time: they talked hoops.tmpplchld The 76ers open their third training camp under Brown on Tuesday. During a busy summer, the coach traveled to Australia to watch the national team he previously coached; to Springfield, Mass., to see one of his coaching mentors inducted into the Hall of Fame; to Chicago for an NBA coaches’ meeting; and, locally, to Lower Merion for a clinic for coaches at the junior level. The Middle East trip was a particular highlight, though, and a new friendship.tmpplchld “When we started talking basketball, it went all over the place,” Brown said.tmpplchld One place it went was to the challenge that confronts Brown this season _ there always seems to be one _ and that is designing a system that works with two big men, Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor, on the floor at the same time. Whatever Brown concluded, that work begins Tuesday at Stockton College in Galloway Township.tmpplchld “Wherever we were, by the end of the night, he and I would be at the table, talking philosophy and X’s and O’s,” said Wright, the men’s basketball coach at Villanova. “We’d be moving around salt shakers and all that. We talked a lot about having these big guys on his team this year. I loved his excitement about being creative and the fun ways to play these guys. And we shared ideas about teams we’ve seen in college or international or the NBA that were successful playing that way.”tmpplchld During Brown’s own research, he went back and studied what the Spurs did with David Robinson and Tim Duncan, how the Memphis Grizzlies handled the pairing of Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol, and what other teams with multiple big men have tried.tmpplchld “At that point, he was talking about how to use all three of them 1/8including Joel Embiid3/8,” Wright said. “He’s very committed to the fact that he wants to adjust to his personnel. I love how he sees himself as a coach: ‘You give me the players and I’ve got to figure out a way to make them successful. How can this person I’ve been given be most successful?’ That’s a lot better than a guy who says, ‘This has to be done my way.’ “tmpplchld During the trip, they talked about everything from inbound plays (college teams are better at inbounding from underneath), to the value of analytics (useful, but not infallible), to dealing with pressure and expectations in Philadelphia (they like it). In between, they coached kids and did so in some remarkable settings.tmpplchld “We were doing the clinic in Ramallah and we were on a court that was cracked and broken, no nets, bent rims. It was like 20 kids who had never even seen a basketball,” Wright said. “And I’m on one end of the court and he’s on the other, and he’s teaching those kids how to dribble. We’ve got an NBA coach doing this. I thought, ‘This is pretty cool,’ and I was just so impressed by his humility and his love for the game.”tmpplchld If coaching the Sixers during this juncture of their history is good for nothing else, it’s great for humility. But that’s how Brown operates anyway. If he is placed on a court with children who can’t dribble, he’s fine with teaching at that level. If he is given a pair of tall basketball players _ the two best players on his team _ he will try to find the path to unlocking their potential together. tmpplchld So, season three begins after an offseason of searching for answers and pursuing the game around the globe. As usual, Brett Brown has a tough job ahead of him, but he can remind himself that he was very recently where things are a lot tougher.tmpplchld ___tmpplchld ABOUT THE WRITERtmpplchld Bob Ford is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.tmpplchld ___tmpplchld (c)2015 Philadelphia Inquirertmpplchld Visit Philadelphia Inquirer at www.philly.comtmpplchld Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.tmpplchld