How Important Was The Tenth Win For The Philadelphia 76ers?

Just one win? No. Just a perfect way to reassure the Philadelphia 76ers that they still have a pulse and will be all the stronger next season.

It’s tough to cheer these Philadephia 76ers if the team doesn’t perform in ways that warrants cheering. But don’t equate the lack of cheering with the love of a city to the professional sport that means so much to the culture, the energy, and the hope of the fans.

Fans that love this team and are picking out the glimmer of lights in the nighttime sky of the occasional success, lights of hope in the performances of Jahlil Okafor, Nerlens Noel, Isaiah Canaan, Nik Stauskas this season. But the team had a streak of bad luck. Losing 12 consecutive games was sapping strength from the team, siphoning off the positive energy of the NBA draft, of the off-season potential for improving this team, and forcing the focus upon the season’s loss column. Head coach Brett Brown was aware of all these things, but until the spiral downward was severed, he was locked into pulling the nose up before it crashed landed as tying the record as the worst team in NBA history. With the tenth win of the season, the spell has been broken, and words can replace fears:

"“Words like ‘appreciation,’ words like ‘responsibility,’ words like ‘gratitude’ for them staying at the level that they have stayed, it’s amazing to me. This is the city of Philadelphia. It is a blue collar, hardcore, sport-minded city, and they have experienced three years of losing basketball games. Yet 19,000 people come last week [Indiana], they cheer at the end a genuine cheer for young guys that are busting their tail. It’s just very heartfelt for me as the coach to be in the building and feel that. I feel as driven now than I did when we all met in Stockton. We’ve got stuff left to do. Here we are here at home. We have three games here to conclude our season in front of our fans. We look at it as an opportunity to give something back, to play the way we want to play, to find a win.I’m not tired, I’m not looking forward to the season ending. I want them to go reap the benefits of how hard they work, because nobody really knows. All they sort of know is that the record is the record, and that’s kind of what they feel, and they deserve to feel a hell of a lot better than that. They deserve to feel a hell of a lot better than that,” said Brown before the Sixers took the court at The Center on Tuesday. “They put in the time. I feel like they’ve earned the right to find a win and play good basketball and play with some level of a spirit and swagger. I don’t want them walking out there feeling anything else but that. And so my message to them is true. It’s that. They’ve earned the right to go perform better than we have, and our record shows. I’m with them. They have put in the time, and they’ve stayed amazingly together. I want them to end well together.” – Brett Brown describing the significance of the tenth win for the team, and the city."

While the New Orleans Pelicans are in their own NBA battles to remain afloat despite getting hit hard by the injury bug, their destiny is already written in as a lottery team in the upcoming 2016 NBA draft. In fact, the Pelicans currently boast a 21.5% chance of harvesting a top three draft pick in the upcoming NBA draft. At this point in the season, the Philadelphia 76ers are locks to enjoy the best odds in the upcoming NBA draft – with 46.5% natural chance for landing one of the top two picks this year, plus the added bonus of 6.1% when factoring in the 23rd ranked Sacramento Kings’ first round probability. Due to a draft swap arranged when the Sixers absorbed excess salaries of players in the summer of 2015, the Sixers have rights to swap their first round pick with that of the Kings if the Sacramento Kings’ pick is better.

So with no direct draft impact, it simply falls to the feel good feeling of the win, or even more importantly, to shunt the despair of losing so consistently. Right now, it is so incredibly important for these young men to “play with some level of spirit and swagger.” Fear is a paralyzing reaction to the unknown. While so many others spitball this team, they have marched through one of the most difficult seasons ever encountered by NBA players, and they did it as a team. There was no dissension in the ranks. There was no public leak of players unhappy in the locker room, nor upset with sharing time. For as many ways as you can count on reasons to discount the Philadelphia 76ers, you cannot discount their effort to keep coming back, keep trying, keep putting forth effort. Each player on this team has stuck together as part of a team which faced true adversity.