Brotherly Love is Back in Philly

The Sixers Unlikely Resurgence

March 28, 2008

Want to meet the NBA’s hottest team, its biggest surprise and the proverbial team no-one wants to face come playoff time? Try the Philadelphia 76ers!

Since the All-Star break, only the Boston Celtics and Detroit Pistons have a better record in the Eastern Conference than Maurice Cheeks and his boys led by point guard Andre Miller. Just two months ago, it didn’t look like Philadelphia would be anywhere near their current position. Hell, it didn’t look like either Cheeks or Miller would still be Sixers at this point.

How did this all happen?

At the outset of the season, the 76ers were picked to land somewhere at the bottom of the weak Eastern Conference. Not only that, but Philadelphia seemed like one of the least interesting teams out there. The Knicks may be awful on the court but at least they generate enough drama off it to keep a horde of NYC beat-writers employed. The Sixers, however, had sent away the corner-stone of the franchise, Allen Iverson, to the Denver Nuggets for Andre Miller in the middle of the season and looked to start a long rebuilding project centred around Andre Iguodala and millions in cap space.

Iverson had been the brightest star and most popular player in Philadelphia since Julius Erving aka Dr. J and Moses Malone had brought a championship to town in 1983. Since being drafted No. 1 in 1996, the diminutive Iverson – generously listed at 6-0 – had fought with the big boys and been the Sixers’ unquestioned leader. Instead of merely launching three-pointers and distributing the basketball as other “little men”, A.I. relentlessly attacked the hoop and scored many of his points on lay-ups and foul shots. In spite of the beating he took on his forays to the basket, Iverson always got back up and rarely missed time with injuries.

With defensive enforcer Dikembe Mutombo having his back, A.I. won the MVP in 2001 and took the 76ers all the way to the Finals against the almighty Los Angeles Lakers. The Sixers stole Game 1 in LA in overtime but it remained their sole win in the series. The next couple of years, Philly stayed competitive in the East, yet could not keep up as the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers improved and surged past them. It also became increasingly obvious that playing with the high-scoring ball-hogging Iverson was not an unequivocal pleasure. All the guys who were brought in to play second fiddle to A.I. failed and soon left the franchise again. In late 2006, after missing the playoffs the previous season, the Sixers’ GM Billy King decided it was time to finally cut the cords and start over again.

Now, Philadelphia’s tortured sports fans were left to face years of rebuilding and their only hope for victory was that Sylvester Stallone might come out of retirement to shoot Rocky VII. And when this season started off as bad as expected, the empty seats in the Wachovia Center became too numerous to count.

There were plenty of issues this team had to deal with:

Andre Iguodala is a singular athlete whose raw athleticism is probably only matched by the Hawks’ Josh Smith and the Grizzlies’ Rudy Gay. It wasn’t clear, however, whether the 2006 Dunk Contest Champ (we’ll ignore the fact that Nate Robinson stole the award) had the basketball instincts to match his high-flying dunks. Iguodala seemed much better suited to be the third option on a really good team rather than carrying the load as the franchise player – unfortunately, he wanted to be paid as such.

Next to Sam Cassell’s buyout from the Los Angeles Clippers, the surest bet in the League was that Andre Miller was going to be shipped to a title contender sometime before the trade deadline for further cap relief. Miller was having a great season, distributing the ball with usual ease while also shouldering more of the scoring load. But with the team going nowhere, what was the point of having him around? Locker room chemistry also appeared frail as vastly overpaid Haitian center Samuel Dalembert publicly complained about his lack of touches.

In December 2007, push came to shove. General Manager Billy King, for years a prime target of the fans’ wrath, was relieved of his duties. His firing didn’t immediately change the team’s outlook as the Sixers were still stuck at 19-30 following a loss to the Atlanta Hawks on February 4th. But one guy in the organization breathed a huge sigh of relief after King was gone and it may well have contributed to lighting a spark in his players: their Coach.

Maurice Cheeks, a member of the legendary 1983 championship team, had been a dead-man walking. Reports had surfaced that King wanted to sack Cheeks but had been overturned by chairman Ed Snider. With King out of the picture, Cheeks could focus on the main task in hand: bringing his team together.

Talent is a necessity; but talent itself is not enough. Oftentimes, a group of guys that like each other, know each other’s tendencies and buy into their respective roles on the team, can beat a collection of superior talents that don’t mesh as well. That seems to be the case with this Sixers team, which is essentially the same group that finished last season at 35-47. And they have found an unlikely leader: the soft-spoken Andre Miller. Overshadowed in a Nuggets’ locker room full of big stars (and even bigger egos), Miller’s calm demeanour has struck a chord with his young teammates that are still trying to make a name for themselves.

Following Wednesday’s easy 121-99 victory over the Chicago Bulls during which Andre Miller notched 18 assists and flirted with a triple-double, the surging Sixers find themselves in sixth place, just half a game behind the fifth-placed Washington Wizards. If they maintain their pace – which seems likely given how the Wizards and Raptors have been slumping of late – Philadelphia is going to avoid either Boston or Detroit in the first round and has a decent chance to still be playing in May for the first time in six years.

That may not seem like a fairytale ending but it’s much more than anyone could reasonably expect – which is well-worthy of perpetual underdog and Philadelphia’s greatest son, Rocky Balboa.

- Ole

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Created by: Ole