Sources: 76ers negotiating with Brett Brown to become their head coach

The Philadelphia 76ers are engaged in contract negotiations to try and make San Antonio Spurs assistant Brett Brown the franchise's new head coach, league sources told Yahoo! Sports.

Brown has been offered the job, but the sides have to come to an agreement on contract length and compensation, sources said.

For the past seven years, Brown has been a bench assistant coach under Gregg Popovich with San Antonio. He joined the Spurs for a second time in 2001.

With the loss of assistant coach Mike Budenholzer to the Atlanta Hawks, Brown had been expected to be promoted to top assistant under Popovich.

Brown was the Australian national coach and led the Aussies to a strong showing in the 2012 Olympic Games in London. For 14 seasons, Brown coached in the Australian National Basketball League. In nine seasons as a head coach, Brown won 149 games – the sixth highest in league history.

New 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie has embraced a complete rebuilding project and whomever is hired as coach is assured of an avalanche of losing that will come with the Sixers' pursuit of high draft picks and salary cap flexibility over the next couple of seasons.

Brown was one of four candidates to meet with 76ers ownership in New York this week. Boston's Jay Larranaga, Chicago's Adrian Griffin and Atlanta's Kenny Atkinson are also finalists for the job. Sixers assistant Michael Curry, a holdover from ex-head coach Doug Collins' staff, has also remained in the pool of candidates.

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