McCaffery

ers who would not be overwhelmed by the moment, and who would not let their younger teammates be overwhelmed, either.

“I just said it to Coach,” McConnell was saying the other night, long after the triumph over the Nets. “It’s weird to be on the other side of the late-game stuff, where you usually see us collapse, like we did last year. And that’s all about bringing the guys in that we have, like J.J. (Redick). They have been big leaders for us.

“The game against New York, I’m not sure we would have had enough to close them out before. And that’s a credit to us to be able to close them out and play well at the end.”

Earlier in the week, after a rugged loss to the Indiana Pacers, Brown was asked about the Sixers’ habit of turning the ball over, and why that hasn’t improved. His response was clever: “Because you can’t expedite birth certificates.” In that, he seemed to be using a familiar card, the one the Sixers had played for so long that it had turned worn and flimsy. It was that they were too young, still, to play with necessary precision in the late-season seeding race and beyond.

Technically, the Sixers should never have been permitted to use youth to explain failure. That’s because they were young by design, not by fate. Yet during their tanking stage, it was at least an understandable position. The other night, Brown’s birth-certificate defense was interesting, and almost had a comic twist. The Sixers employ Belinelli, 30, Ilyasova, 29, Johnson, 29, Redick, 32 and Jerryd Bayless, 28. Robert Covington, 27, is in his fifth Sixers season. Injuries have cast Joel Embiid, 21, as inexperienced, but this is his fourth NBA season. Dario Saric, 22, is deeply seasoned as an international star.

Ben Simmons is young,