Down in South Philadelphia last night, the crowd filled in slowly for the Sixers’ Play-In Tournament matchup with the Magic. Blame traffic concerns if you’d like given that the Phillies were hosting a game across the street too and the simple fact that it was a weeknight. Sitting at Xfinity Mobile Arena before tipoff, both levels of the stands were fairly dead. Would the fan base lay an egg for this one? I couldn’t blame them much if that was the case.
The Sixers were playing for the right to be the seventh
seed in the Eastern Conference and likely lose to the Celtics in the postseason for the sixth time this century. Joel Embiid was sidelined as he recovers from surgery for appendicitis while his timetable for returning to the court remains unclear. The promises of the Process and those first handful of playoff runs in the Embiid era have evaporated. Most people in this city are bitter about the team, or, even worse, apathetic.
Things, however, shifted as the game progressed. The arena filled up. People were decked out in jerseys from across the decades for the franchise, from Julius Erving to Allen Iverson to even a lingering Dario Šarić that I saw. Fans fed off the energy of the Sixers’ dynamic backcourt duo of Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe. By the time Andre Drummond, the unsung hero of the evening, nailed a three-pointer with under a minute to go in the first half, the crowd popped. It was as if the clock turned back to a time where anything was possible for the direction of the Sixers as unlimited possibilities were staring at us for the next decade.
I remember being there for the Sixers’ first post-Process playoff game against the Heat in 2018. It may have only been six years since the last time the Sixers were in the postseason, but it felt closer to 60. The Sixers torched Miami in the 27-point victory as vets Marco Belinelli and Ersan İlyasova went supernova off the bench and rookie sensation Ben Simmons dished out 14 assists. It was everything I had dreamed of playing out in front of my own eyes.
I’m a Sixers pessimist. That has been abundantly clear for a while, likely dating back to the team’s 2021 collapse against Atlanta that I’ve never fully recovered from in terms of my fandom. Still, it’s nice to get wrapped up in something bigger than ourselves, right? That’s how it felt watching this team pull out that win. Roaring after yet another improbable Drummond three near the end of the fourth quarter that padded the Sixers’ lead with 20,000 people is what it’s all about.
This all may be fleeting. I am not entertaining a miraculous upset of the Celtics in the coming days. I also imagine quite a few Boston fans, both those from the New England area and the disgusting locals who root for them, will be present and diminish the Sixers’ home court energy. At the very least, this win over Orlando was a call back to what makes playoff basketball so special for the fans in attendance and, maybe, just maybe, a harbinger of brighter days for the franchise in the future (maybe the distant future…).
