(AP)

Wednesday night, Brett Brown gets introduced to life as an NBA head coach.

Training camp was nice. Preseason didn’t count. And the dais of an introductory press conference veiled the discomfort of the day-to-day job. Brown’s tenure as the 76ers’ head coach begins Wednesday night … against the same team that ended his tenure as an assistant coach in San Antonio.

When the Sixers host the Miami in the Heat’s backend of a back-to-back (they open the season tonight against Chicago), Brown will be facing the reigning two-time NBA champions. But Brown said there are no hard feelings. Not anymore, at least.

“Everybody knows the last time I saw them was a huge disappointment,” Brown said Tuesday, following the Sixers’ practice at PCOM. “Personally I feel like I’m in a different place now and the hangover, the residue of all of that still exists, not to the point where you think about it a lot.”

More important to Brown, than seeking any shred of revenge against Miami, is getting his team ready for what will undoubtedly be the first of many challenges this season. The Heat are the Heat and the Sixers are, well, the Sixers. They’re at different ends of the NBA spectrum, and one will offer a decent measuring stick for the other. (I’ll let you guess to which one I’m referring.)

“I think it’s the reality of what is the benchmark of our sport,” Brown said of playing the Heat. “Any time you can get a true guideline of where you stand as an individual or as a team, it’s an honest reflection of what we have to do if we aspire to get to where they are, along with the excitement of starting an NBA season.”

The Sixers will tip off against the Heat at 7 p.m. Wednesday.