Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Protecting home court has become Sixers’ identity
PHILADELPHIA >> Challenged by injury and, for much of the night, an ordinary basketball team from Chicago, the Sixers Friday were at two familiar spots. They were behind in the second half of a game. And they were at home. The Bulls, in other words, were in trouble.
In a season of more mystery than expected, the end of it nearer than the beginning, the Sixers have played 22 home games. They’ve won 20, including Friday, when they pulled away from a halftime deficit to win, 10089. Twenty. And two. Run that math through the statistics scientists, drag it past the skeptics, even offer it for consideration as a curiosity. But 20and-2 is not an outlier. It’s not a small in-season swing. It’s not, in the middle of January, some kind of back-door reflection of a scheduling quirk. Twenty wins against two losses says something. Indeed it says plenty. It says that when the Sixers are challenged on their home floor, they respond with a defiance that can be their defining characteristic.
“I understand it,” Brett Brown said. “And I agree with you.”
Brown and many others noticed the trend when the Sixers were 14-0 at home. Ev
eryone else had to recognize it when Brown’s team stomped the Milwaukee Bucks by a dozen in a Christmas afternoon showcase. Even then, though, it technically was too soon to declare that what was happening was remarkable.
Yet that was a home winning streak the Sixers extended to six Friday, even on a night when they didn’t play their best at times against a team with its own injury problems and rebuilding issues. With that, there was the reality that the Sixers’ home-court success breeds more home-court success.
They don’t hope to win close games at home. They expect it. “Definitely,” Tobias Harris was saying, after scoring 13 points. “We have the mentality that, night in and night out, that we will protect our court. We come out here with great energy and great focus. And it always helps that our crowd is so great.”
The Sixers drew another 20,919 Friday, a sellout. Clearly the panic that has spread in some areas, the one that has generated such nonsense as Brown being in some depth of hot water, has not spread to the ticket market. Yet it was a bit of an edgy gathering, with just enough boos to register after the Bulls won the first quarter, 24-21, and then more of the same when the Sixers trailed by a point at the half.
But the Sixers, even without Joel Embiid, didn’t crumble. Instead, they toughened. For they have become that team that, when challenged, uses its consistent Wells Fargo Center play as a reminder that its house is a place in which they do not lose.
“The last game, we really battled back,” Harris said. “Tonight, we just had to clean up mistakes. Then in the fourth quarter, our defense was really good. We were at home, we turned it up, and it drove us to the win.”
In their most recent game, the Sixers outscored Brooklyn, 31-16, in the final 12 minutes to win by 11. They brushed off three quarters of inconsistency with a fresh defensive intensity, trusted Harris to provide the big buckets, and took control so swiftly that the Nets barely knew what happened.
“I’ll have to go through it and look at the quality shots,” Brooklyn coach Kenny Atkinson would say. “I thought we had a ton of good looks. We were under 50 percent at the rim, so we were getting to the rim, just not finishing.”
They weren’t finishing because on that night the Sixers had no doubt that their home record about to bump to 19-2.
Such is the mental benefit of it having been 18-2.
“When we need to, I feel we go up a level defensively,” Brown suggested. “I really feel like we go to a different place in fourth periods, especially defensively. That’s where I have my sights centered, because I think that side of it produces a physical toughness. I think that it feeds into a mental toughness and connects the differences of being at home and on the road a little cleaner.”
The Sixers are not alone with a distinct home court advantage. The Lakers were 16-5, the Clippers 194. Milwaukee is also 202. That could matter later, with the Bucks almost certain to own the homecourt advantage should they encounter the Sixers in the playoffs.
Thus, the question, the one the Sixers will confront Saturday, when they resurface in Madison Square Garden: How about that road record?
“I have discussed that with my team in the last 24 hours,” Brown said before the game. “I said, ‘You know, we’re 19-2 at home, but we’re 7-14 on the road. Why? That’s my question. And you’d be lying if you didn’t connect some of that to this building and to the fans. You feel a responsibility. And it grows. And it swells. And it produces a feeling that you want to win again, and you want to win again, and you want to win again.”
If the Sixers don’t feel it early, they feel it late.
“I don’t know what the math tells us,” Brown said. “But we are pretty darn good at home, especially in the fourth quarters.”
The math may say plenty.
The record says even more.