"You can talk about it all you want, but until you experience it, it's hard to learn.

"Hopefully, we're going to experience that now and really benefit for it."

That might sound similar to what 76ers coach Maurice Cheeks has said recently as his young team makes a surprising push to the NBA playoffs, but it's not from him.

The author of that quote was a more eccentric Sixers coach - Larry Brown.

Brown said it on April 12, 1999, when his Sixers team, led by third-year guard Allen Iverson, was trying to make the playoffs for the first time since the 1990-91 season.

Flash forward nearly a decade and this is Brown, um Cheeks, after the Sixers' thrilling, come-from-behind victory on Monday in Boston.

"We talk about the present. We don't talk about anything beyond that. [The younger players] haven't experienced anything beyond what we're doing now."

It's two Sixers teams of different generations walking similar paths. But while some things are the same, many are different.

The obvious difference is that the iridescent Iverson now plies his trade in Denver with the Nuggets.

In '99, Brown was just tuning in on what to do with his high-scoring "two" guard in a point guard's body.

While the experiment ultimately proved successful, the trial and error sometimes drove both Brown and Iverson to the brink of insanity. Even fighting for a playoff spot couldn't squelch the occasional controversies generated in this love-hate relationship between these strong-willed and thickheaded competitors.

On April 2, Brown and Iverson had an infamous dust-up against Cleveland that threatened to poison the playoff push. After being sat for much of the first half, Iverson cursed at Brown. When Brown sat Iverson for the entire second half of an 85-80 loss, it was widely assumed he was teaching his petulant star a lesson.

Brown said he sat Iverson because Iverson told him he was hurt. Iverson took offense when it was suggested he wasn't really hurt but was just too angry at Brown to go back in the game.

The behind-the-scenes rumor was that Brown sat Iverson the next game, a 97-82 loss at Toronto, just to emphasize that Iverson, who missed only two games that season, actually was hurt.

If that actually was the case, sacrificing that game to end that story angle might have saved the season.

Today's Sixers are so mentally in sync, you sometimes feel they will break out in a chorus of "Kumbaya."

Cheeks has fostered a selfless attitude that has allowed this team to weather the firing of president/general manager Billy King, the trade of popular teammate Kyle Korver, the push by new general manager Ed Stefanski to get more playing time for younger players, and the general belief from virtually everyone that they were destined for another trip to the NBA lottery.

At 36-35, the Sixers hold the sixth spot in the Eastern Conference. Heading into last night with six more wins than the eighth-place Atlanta Hawks and ninth-place New Jersey Nets, it would take a New York Mets-type collapse to miss the playoffs.

In 1999, the Sixers were 19-17 with 14 games left in the modified, 50-game season.

At the time of Brown's quote, they were in the eighth spot, a half game behind New York for seventh but only a half game ahead of ninth-place Cleveland.

Two weeks later, with five games left, the Sixers missed a chance to clinch a playoff berth by losing, 85-70, to the Knicks.

The next game, in front of a sellout crowd at home, the Sixers beat the Toronto Raptors, 103-96, to wrap up the postseason bid.

"I can't describe how good this feels," Iverson said at that time.

Ultimately, the 1999 Sixers earned the sixth seed in the East and upset the Orlando Magic in the first round of the playoffs before being swept out by the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

Still, that all-important first step had been taken, and two seasons later the Sixers were the top seed in the East and advanced to the 2001 NBA Finals.

It's too early and would be unfair to predict a similar path for today's Sixers, but one thing we know about sports is that history does tend to repeat itself. *

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