Where Does Brett Brown Rank Among Top NBA Coaches?

When it comes to NBA coaching everyone seems to have an opinion.

Many times fans will call for the coach to be fired when the team losses, but rarely do they get much credit when the team wins a game, there just isn't a lot of middle ground when it comes to NBA coaching, especially Sixers coach Brett Brown.

Brown is constantly under fire from a fan base that wants more from this underachieving team.

"He's a convenient punching bag for things that just aren't systemically right there, in terms of the roster." said former Vice President of Basketball Operations for the Memphis Grizzlies, John Hollinger.

Brown is in one of the most difficult situations in the NBA.

He has plenty of talent on the roster to win, but the talent doesn't really fit well together. While he does have talent to win, his roster lacks continuity, with multiple different looks during his tenure, thanks in part to having three different general managers putting together his roster.

"He navigated two front office transitions, where you don't really ever hear a peep about things going sideways there," Hollinger explained.

There was the multiple different looks during the process years under Sam Hinkie, in which Brown's teams always played hard, even when they were undermanned. He then added talented pieces like J.J. Redick to his young stars Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid. The team the traded for Marco Belinelli and Ersan Ilyasova for their playoff run.  The following year Belinelli and Ilyasova were gone, after the Celtics knocked them out of the playoffs. The team then added Jimmy Butler, while dealing Robert Covington and Dario Saric, and then Tobias Harris to the mix. This season Butler and Redick were gone and Josh Richardson and Al Horford replaced them.

So finding some team chemistry has not exactly been an easy task for Brown, and its one of the most essential things to finding success not only as a team, but as a coach.

John Hollinger and Nate Duncan did the NBA coaching rankings recent and ranked Brown in their second tier of NBA coaches, just outside of the top-10.

"I thought he did a really nice job in that Toronto series last year," said Duncan, a NBA Salary Cap expert. "I think putting Joel Embiid on Pascal Siakam totally changed that series last year."

Brown gets criticized from many things from his rotations, to Simmons not shooting, for not calling enough plays.

"He hasn't been able to get through to Ben Simmons," Duncan said on the negative ledger for Brown.

"I like the way he staggers his groups, he works well with his analytic staff, he works well with how is runs his rotations, I think that makes sense. With the personnel he has, he's embraced the post-ups, Embiid has great numbers posting up this year," added Duncan on some of the positives.

The guys ranked the coaches based on a variety of categories including:

• Talent vs results
  Lineup/player usage making sense
  System
  Team playing hard
  Locker room harmony
  Player development
  Harmony with front office
  Late game coaching
  Playoff adjustments

"He certainly has been give a lot of big talent, but also a lot of big challenges."

Among the top coaches were Toronto's Nick Nurse, Clippers coach Doc Rivers, Spurs coach Greg Popovich, Celtics coach Brad Stevens and Golden State's Steve Kerr.