Rockets' Christian Wood Wasn't Fond of Former Sixers Coach Brett Brown
The Philadelphia 76ers' process wasn't easy for anybody. Not for the fans, not for the coaches, and definitely not for the players. Back then, during Brett Brown's early days as the Sixers head coach, Philly employed a bunch of young guys with little-to-no experience at the NBA level.
Many of the players from those days aren't doing too much in the NBA right now, but it turns out there's always going to be a few diamonds in the rough. Back in 2015, the Sixers signed an undrafted prospect out of UNLV, Christian Wood.
At the time, it was unclear what Wood would become. Typically, undrafted prospects have a small chance of cracking a team's rotation and making an impact -- especially early on. But Wood believed he should've had that opportunity during his lone season with the 76ers.
After a single season in Philly, Wood moved on to have stints in Charlotte, Milwaukee, and New Orleans. It wasn't until his one season with the Detroit Pistons when Wood really emerged as one of the more intriguing bigs in the NBA.
Last year, Wood appeared in 62 games for the Pistons. In an average of 21 minutes of action, he collected 13 points-per-game, along with 6.3 rebounds-per-game. Heading into the 2020-2021 offseason, Wood was one of the hotter names on the market and worked with the Pistons to agree on a sign-and-trade to land with the Houston Rockets with a three-year, $41 million contract.
Four games into the season, Wood truly looks like the real deal for the Rockets. So far this season, the big man has put up 23 points-per-game while collecting an average of 10 rebounds, blocking two shots-per-game.
On Saturday night, as SportsCenter's Twitter account celebrated Wood's successful start in Houston, former Sixers guard Tony Wroten shared a memory of Wood's frustration with former Sixers head coach, Brett Brown, back during the 2015-2016 season.
Brett Brown had a decent reputation for being a players' coach -- but he surely wasn't embraced by everybody. Every now and then, a former Sixers player will pop up and express how they were once frustrated with Brown and his decisions when playing for him.
Now, Christian Wood seems to be the latest former player who wasn't very thrilled with Brown, according to Wroten. Nobody could've really predicted that Wood, an undrafted prospect, would turn out to be on the road to stardom in the NBA. So, it's hard to fault Brown or the Sixers for not getting Wood's full potential out of him during his lone season in Philly.
