Brookover: Sixers, Flyers deflated again
That hissing sound you heard Wednesday night coming out of the Wells Fargo Center was the air that continued to leak from the 21-year-old building that has never been home to a championship team.
That hissing sound you heard Wednesday night coming out of the Wells Fargo Center was the air that continued to leak from the 21-year-old building that has never been home to a championship team.
After a come-from-far-behind win over the Los Angeles Clippers on Jan. 24, the 76ers appeared to be building toward something worth watching again. They won without Joel Embiid that evening and did so again the next night on the road in Milwaukee. That gave them 10 wins in 13 games, which was as many victories as they had posted the previous season.
Embiid, after a three-game absence that did not raise any eyebrows because the team had said since training camp it planned to manage his return from two foot surgeries, was back on the court for a home game against Houston on Jan. 27. The 7-foot-2 franchise savior opened the evening with an authoritative move to the rim that he finished by slamming the ball through the basket.
It was the first two of his 32 points and it did not matter that he was outdueled by the Rockets' James Harden, who put up 51 points to go along with his 13 assists and 13 rebounds. The folks at the Wells Fargo had witnessed something special and they were sure there was more to come in the near future.
Embiid talked about the 76ers making a playoff run and the people said, "Why not?" as they raised cats in the air in the most peculiar displays of exuberance.
Now, all that momentum is gone.
The Sixers, after Wednesday's 111-103 loss to the San Antonio Spurs, have dropped five in a row and seven out of eight. Only three teams in the NBA have a worse record and Embiid's playoff dream will have to wait at least until next year.
Embiid, who has a bone bruise on his left knee, has not played since that game in Houston, a string of absences that will reach eight games when the Sixers play Thursday night in Orlando. The Sixers had already scheduled that as a day off for Embiid because they do not want him to play on back-to-back nights this season. Never mind that he has not played in nearly two weeks. Please just accept the pretzel logic and know that the 76ers simply want to make sure that Embiid feels better than Pat Croce before letting their center back on the court.
If they had just let Embiid play at whatever percent he was Wednesday, they might have pulled out a win over the Spurs, who did not bring their "A" game to Philadelphia.
Coach Brett Brown said he had a 45-minute meeting Tuesday with Embiid and Ben Simmons, the 76ers' other perpetually absent young star. Afterward, Embiid worked out on the practice court in Camden for 20 minutes. He did so again Wednesday before being placed back in the team's injury protection program at game time.
"He's coming along fine," Brown said. "Nobody needs to worry that there is anything deeper than that. We're just moving slowly and trying to move wisely. There is no conspiracy theory."
Maybe not, but another season has been lost. If you want to argue that the 76ers were not going to win anything anyway, that's fine. But fighting for a playoff spot and actually playing in a playoff series can help expedite the drive toward the ultimate goal.
Simmons, out since the start of the season with the foot fracture he suffered in training camp, still has no return date.
"He's moving along, but it doesn't answer the bottom-line questions everybody wants to hear," Brown said. "I understand that. We understand that. In regards to when he will play, we do not know that and when we do we will share that with people."
Brown did say that Simmons will need "greater than five" practices with the team before he returns to the court, which offers no insight as to when his long-awaited debut will occur.
In the meantime, the air keeps leaking from the Wells Fargo Center.
To be fair, the Flyers are responsible for the recent sinking sensation around here, too. They haven't scored against a goaltender in 141 minutes and have just 12 goals in their last nine games. Since winning 10 in a row, they've lost 15 of 22. Shayne Gostisbehere is one of their best young players, but he has been benched for the last three games.
"If a player can't handle a benching, whether it is one of our players or one of our veterans, we probably have the wrong players and the wrong people," Flyers general manager Ron Hextall told reporters Wednesday. "This is part of the process. It is not fun."
Up in New England, they do not have to "trust the process" or even endure it. Instead, they celebrate it. The Patriots' Super Bowl title Sunday was their fifth in 15 years. That's a .333 average, which is 115 points higher than the Sixers' winning percentage in the last four seasons. If you're scoring at home, that's 10 titles since the turn of the century up in Beantown and the Red Sox are the American League favorite to reach the World Series.
All things considered, where would you rather be?
@brookob