Earning nod from Belinelli is serious sign of change

PHILADELPHIA » Circumstances financial and practical had enabled Marco Belinelli to tumble in recent days into NBA free agency. He did not lack for attention.

“You want all the teams?” he asked.

Shoot … pun intended. “OK,” Belinelli said. “OKC. Toronto. Milwaukee. Portland. And, I forget. A couple other teams. Good teams. And that, for sure, made me happy. But I was really sure about Philly. This was the right choice for me.”

So there was Oklahoma City, with Russell Westbrook, a top five team in the West. And there were the Raptors, at the top of the Eastern Conference standings. And Milwaukee, which will be in a good fight for a playoff spot. Same with the Trail Blazers. But when the 31-year-old three-point expert was salary-dumped by the Atlanta Hawks, he chose the Sixers. And that was him, in uniform Monday, for a Wells Fargo Center game against the Knicks.

Why?

“I trust the process,” he said.

With that, he smiled a bit. But that’s the catch-all rationalization for everything the Sixers have done since their mangled Andrew Bynum experiment. So he was taught to recite the company’s mission statement. On a certain plane, it was chuckle-worthy. But on another, it could not have been less accurate. For the Sixers moving to sign a veteran, competent, professional scorer in his physical prime for a February playoff-push is counter to all they had done through Brett Brown’s first four years in charge.

In the recent past, the Sixers would wait until the games mattered, drop their tailgates, drag out their card tables and put everything up for sale, flea-market style. In the past, they would spend the back end of seasons dragging marginal professionals in and out of the locker room so quickly that Brown was almost proud to have had such a collection of fringe NBA talents. “Twelve point guards … 13 point guards … 14, 15, 16.” The Sixers’ coach always had the running count available to share. And it was ridiculous, all of it. The idea was to be just flimsy enough to miss the playoffs, win lottery ping-pong balls and try to build something through lucky draft position. That was the so-called process in ... a nutshell.

But to add Belinelli just days after Brown let it known that true NBA contenders typically look for ways to add bench scoring late in the season was a signature moment in the organization’s recent history.

“It’s a star,” Brown said, “on the program’s forehead.”

Marco Belinelli can shoot, has shot, and will shoot for the Sixers, who needed at least one more outside scoring threat to make a late run at a top-four Eastern Conference finish and home court advantage in the first playoff round. In 52 games with the Hawks, he’d been averaging 11.4 points and shooting .372 from threepoint range. An 11th-year NBA pro from Italy, Belinelli is almost a second JJ Redick.

“JJ, for sure, is a great shooting guard,” Belinelli said. “We have played against each other a lot of times. And finally, we don’t have to guard each other. But we are on the same team. So that’s a good thing.”

That’s how the grown-up franchises behave. And never mind, either, that had the Sixers not wasted the No. 1 overall pick in the last draft on Markelle Fultz they might not have had to make the run at Belinelli. The circumstances were what they were. And the Sixers reacted.

The Belinelli signing was more than a quick salve to soothe fans who might have expected something more newsworthy at the trade deadline. He will move somewhere into the top eight in Brown’s rotation, providing the scoring punch that Jerryd Bayless never did or that Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot has not done on a regular enough basis.

With Belinelli having settled on a buyout of the remaining $6.6 million he was owed by the Hawks, he will cost the Sixers just the veteran’s minimum. It didn’t mean he’d been easily attained. Brown literally had to go into something of a sales role, convincing Belinelli that the Sixers were as likely to contend as any other team on his list. Brown could point to a healthy Joel Embiid and a dynamic Ben Simmons and Redick, with the way he can shoot. But he could say that the franchise added Amir Johnson and Bayless, too, players with some experience, each a sign that things are turning serious.

Once they had Belinelli’s attention, the Sixers had created some fresh attention of their own.

“Unbelievable,” Brown said, when asked how that made him feel. “It really does. When you start thinking about what he can actually do here and what our needs are, you get into your recruiting mode. You get into calling upon the resources that I have to making an effort to attract him. And as I continued to speak with him, you realize that he was very interested in us.”

Belinelli has played for Golden State, Toronto, New Orleans, Chicago, Sacramento, San Antonio, Charlotte and Atlanta. He has been in 48 playoff games. He knows how it all works.

“When you listen to the competitors that were after him, that would make their teams better like we felt he would make ours better, they’re real legitimate playoff teams, veteran teams,” Brown said. “And he chose us. That hasn’t been the path that we have been on. And it is a real statement to where we were and where we are.”

And to where they could go, too.

Contact Jack McCaffery @jmccaffery@21stcenturymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @ JackMcCaffery