April 29, 2024
Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports
Knicks fans owned the Wells Fargo Center over the weekend.
MVP chants rang out through the Wells Fargo Center on Sunday during a decisive Game 4 between the Sixers and Knicks.
No, they were not for Sixers reigning MVP Joel Embiid. They were for Knicks star guard Jalen Brunson, who dropped 47 points in an offensive masterclass as thousands and thousands of New Yorkers cheered him on in South Philly.
That energy from the Knicks contingent had been there during Game 3 this past Thursday, too, but it hit an entirely new level in Sunday's crushing Game 4 loss for the Sixers. It was an archetypal high-leverage playoff performance for this franchise. Their basketball IQ was in the gutter. Embiid was completely gassed. He couldn't score, nor could anyone else. Philly's least-favorite spring rerun was on full display.
After the Knicks, who are simply better and tougher than this Sixers squad, won, New Yorkers danced and partied and screamed in the concourse of the Wells Fargo Center as expletive-laden chants about Embiid broke out:
Wells Fargo Center is MSG south right now @TommyBeer pic.twitter.com/FSykMrzh91
— Jesse Golomb (@jessegolomb_) April 28, 2024
Philly loves to boast about its ability to take over other stadiums, and they certainly have in the past across multiple sports, from Washington to Brooklyn to North Jersey to Los Angeles, but getting punked at your own arena like this in a big-time playoff is a smackdown this city is not familiar with.
Embiid himself took notice after the game, saying that this New York takeover "pissed" him off:
"Kind of pisses me off, especially because Philly is considered a sports town." pic.twitter.com/zfghjGvi94
— NBC Sports Philadelphia (@NBCSPhilly) April 28, 2024
People in Philly always want athletes to speak their mind! Sometimes, it's not what you want to hear!
Pointing the finger at Sixers fans, regardless of whether that was what Embiid was specifically, does not work.
Sure, I'd have some questions for the season-ticket holders who list their seats for exorbitant prices just for Knicks fans to gobble them up. A far-above-market-rate ticket to a Sixers playoff game is still probably less than a Madison Square Garden one even when you factor in the cost of a round-trip Amtrak train ride. Before my journalistic days, I was a Sixers season ticket holder for seven or eight years beginning in the peak Process era. When the team was good, I had access to reasonably priced playoff games that I was automatically offered. When Embiid was finally a star and pieces were in place around him, going to those playoff games every single time at Wells Fargo Center made it all worth it. If I couldn't go to a game like that, I'd much rather have tried to give it to a Sixers fan I know in real life than leave it up to the gods of the second-hand ticket market where opposing fans were waiting to pounce.
That doesn't get to why those fans are selling them. Maybe this is simply an outlier series in that Knicks fans will pay so, so much money to see their team finally excel in April. I certainly wouldn't have gotten this type of ROI for Raptors games in 2019! It's deeper than that though.
No one believes in this team. No, I do not mean that in the fun, 2017 Eagles way. No one believed in the 2024 Sixers going into the postseason and four games in, it seems they were rightful not to. It goes beyond this specific roster and even this specific front office regime. This is the seventh consecutive year the Sixers will have an embarrassing playoff flameout. Some losses are bigger than others. Home game L's to the Hawks in 2021 and the Celtics in 2023, are particularly fatalistic in the, "Why on Earth would I ever give myself completely over to this team again?" Yet, when the weather is nice come the next spring, Sisyphus is out there rolling up his rock in a throwback Allen Iverson jersey.
People aren't showing up to this series because the Sixers' superstar, their role players and their management have given them zero reason to expect this postseason would be different from any of the others that have been endured during this era. Would it really have been much different if they were the No. 8 seed and had a matchup with the Celtics instead? An infuriating sea of green would've descended upon the South Philadelphia Sports Complex. You'd have seen just as many Rajon Rondo jerseys as you see Latrell Sprewell ones. Squaring off against a bottom-feeder fan base like Orlando wouldn't have created this issue, but if you want to win in the NBA, you have to beat the big boys! The Sixers have long been ill-equipped to do that.
This team has playoff deep-seated woes. Running it back with the same nucleus next season with the same overarching vibes will do little to change that. The Sixers organization is likely embarrassed at how these two "home" games have played out and they rightfully should be. From top to bottom for the franchise, looking in the mirror will showcase their ultimate problem.
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