November 23, 2016
The majority of the parking lot outside of the Wells Fargo Center and across the street from Lincoln Financial Field was empty on Wednesday afternoon, save for about a dozen teenagers taking an important step to manhood by learning how to properly grill sausage links outside a sporting venue.
They were on Thanksgiving break from Spring-Ford High School, so what better way to spend the eve of a holiday than by tailgating at a Sixers game.
Wait, what was that? A throng (ok, pack) of fans not only planned a night out to see a team that’s won all of 51 games in the last four seasons (since the start of 2013-14), but also was excited enough about the event to arrive more than three hours before tipoff?
“Joel Embiid is a monster,” said 16-year-old Pada Yi. “He’s amazing. That’s it.”
Except not amazing enough for the high schoolers’ local sporting good store in Collegeville to carry any Embiid gear. All in good time, surely.
Gotta be the headbands. pic.twitter.com/VHw3x499zN
— Philadelphia 76ers (@Sixers) November 24, 2016
“They’ve started the process,” 17-year-old Tino Magazzolo said.
Process is a touchy word around these parts.
It’s said with conviction from people like Magazzolo and his friends, and from many people of a certain age, the age that barely remembers the Allen Iverson era and surely can’t recall Charles Barkley as anything other than a TV personality, but is well aware of the culture of losing that’s been a part of the South Philly Sports Complex (save the Phillies' recent run) for the majority of their lives. But then there are the older, jaded, less-convinced fans, who use process as a punchline, as a catch-all for the memory of the forgettable (but necessary?) Sam Hinkie era, by the same folks who think they’re clever or original in dubbing the baseball team’s former general manager Ruin Tomorrow Jr.
Debating about the drastic rebuild the Sixers underwent in the last half decade is nearly as divisive as trying to talk politics on Facebook. Proceed with caution and understand going in you’re probably not going to get anywhere in convincing the other side to see the game from your point of view.
The Sixers, also a punchline for the better part of the last three years throughout the sporting world, are trying to change the conversation. After losing seven straight to begin the 2016-17 season, they entered Wednesday night against the Memphis Grizzlies winners of four straight games in Philadelphia, and with an opportunity to claim their first three-game winning streak in nearly three years.
Slowly but surely, the young talent has filtered in: Jahlil Okafor and Nerlens Noel in the last two seasons, fellow lottery picks Embiid and Dario Saric this year. And last year’s No.1 overall pick, Ben Simmons, could find his way onto the court in two months, too.
In the NBA, collecting lottery picks is akin to a baseball team collecting young pitching. The more you have, the better your odds are that two or three will blossom into productive professional players, and perhaps, stars.
And in the NBA, more than in any other sport, with perhaps the exception of landing a franchise quarterback in the NFL, landing in the top two or three of those lottery picks each year increases your odds of drafting a superstar in a sport where superstars are a near-necessity to winning championships.
Even with a lot of losing in their rearview mirror, the Sixers remain in the infancy stage of their … process. But at least the infant has been born.
“We’ve used words in the past like vapor and mist, sort of this thing that’s out there that we can’t touch. They are ours, but we never really saw them,” Sixers head coach Brett Brown said of watching Embiid and Saric complete their first month of NBA games. “And how we’ve got them, we see them, you can touch them, you’re watching them grow. Selfishly for me, I made my annual trips to Istanbul frequently and now here (Saric) is. You go through the pain with Joel with the injury setbacks, and now here he is.”
The crowd in South Philly on Wednesday night – there were few empty seats in the upper bowl – came alive every time Embiid touched the ball, whether with a get-out-of-my-paint block on the defensive end or chasing down a loose ball and draining a three at the top of the key.
Yikes. https://t.co/POfSIfwtvE
— Philadelphia 76ers (@Sixers) November 24, 2016
And that was just in the first half. In the second, the Sixers blew a four quarter lead but managed to force overtime and rally back after not scoring in the first three minutes of said overtime to force a second overtime ... only to lose with Embiid on the bench.
The Sixers won’t compete for a postseason berth in three months. Perhaps next year.
If you’re sick of hearing things like next year, though, you’re missing the fun. There are promise and hope, and you can watch both play against the world’s best players every week this winter at the Wells Fargo Center, and perhaps watch them grow into one of those players themselves.
“It’s been kind of frustrating the last couple of years, but we have to stop tanking at some point, right?” 16-year-old Jake Green said back at the tailgate before Wednesday’s game. “We’re hoping Simmons gets back, and then they’ll be better then.”
The Sixers are already getting better.
And it’s not always about wins and losses, but of the progress of the herd of athletes on the roster who are barely old enough to buy an adult beverage (Okafor and Simmons still aren’t old enough).
The learning curve for every individual player isn’t identical, either. Consider the three 2014 lottery picks on the current roster: Embiid, Saric, and Nik Stauskas. The 23-year-old Stauskas, in his third NBA season and second with the Sixers, appears to be finding the confidence he needs to blossom into a veritable sharp-shooter off the bench, the kind of complementary player every superstar needs.
This is the new process, watching promising players develop. It might sound sexy, but at least you can finally find some enjoyment in the action on the court rather than in the conversation about the summer’s upcoming lottery.
“I’m thrilled for (our players),” Brown said of the rookies on his roster making an impact. “I’m happy for our fans, that they can all sort of point to people that are examples of why we went through some of the pain that we’ve gone through. You can actually touch it now. It’s still extremely raw, extremely young. But they are ours, and they’re in our uniform, on our court. And that matters.”
S 🔥 A 🔥 U 🔥 C 🔥 E pic.twitter.com/UzYyXu0way
— Philadelphia 76ers (@Sixers) November 24, 2016
