Brett Brown won’t confirm or deny report that he’ll coach Australia’s 2020 Olympic team

Sixers coach Brett Brown hedged Tuesday when asked whether he would be coaching the Australian national team in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, as ESPN reported.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Brown said after practice. “It’s stuff that I prefer not to talk right now about. Fair question, though.”

Australia was still finalizing the agreement with Brown as of Tuesday, according to ESPN.

If true, Brown would be returning to the position he held for the 2012 London Olympics, and his team could include the Sixers’ Ben Simmons, who opted not to join the Boomers for September’s FIBA World Cup but indicated he’d return for the Olympics.

Simmons was born in Australia and came to the U.S. in high school. Brown had an extensive coaching career in Australia before moving to the NBA.

Despite classifying Friday’s 127-119 overtime loss to Oklahoma City as the “poorest defensive game that we’ve played all year,” Brown said his primary concerns at the moment are on the offensive side of the court. The team has struggled recently with ballhandling and inconsistent shooting, particularly from beyond the arc.

“It’s how do you take this team and how do you grow it to where it’s functional and purposeful?” Brown said. “Along that path, we will never forget ... that we are a defensive-based program, and everything unravels if we don’t do that."

The road trip “confirmed it’s an interesting team to put together,” the coach said, "with different skill sets.”