Championship path still clear, but Atlanta could bring some bumps

PHILADELPHIA >> Danny Green has three fingers with championship rings and seven empty ones, each with a story, one more horrifying than the next. So the Sixers’ shooter will tell them to young players, during training camp, on road trips, after games. He definitely told a few Friday, before and after practice.

By Sunday afternoon, the Sixers will have begun a second-round playoff series against the Atlanta Hawks, a sneaky-tough team that finished 10 games over .500 in the strange regular season and just blew past the Knicks in Round 1. If all goes to form, and so far it has, the Sixers will be that much closer to what Green experienced last year, an NBA championship, by Sunday night.

If.

“A lot of the stories I will tell are about the times we came up short,” Green was saying from Camden Friday. “Obviously, there have been some good moments, and the memories are great. It’s something you want them to experience for themselves. Obviously, me and Dwight (Howard) were with L.A. last season, and we went back there this year and got our rings. We talked about that here and there through the course of the season.

“But right now, we just want to focus in on Atlanta. That’s the most important game for us.”

That is the most important

game for the Sixers, and that was the most important message for many of them to digest, particularly Friday, the day after the Lakers were eliminated from the first round by Phoenix. With the Sixers having been clear all season that they are in search of a world championship and nothing less, the sudden departure of the sitting championship team had to resonate, even if Anthony Davis only played five minutes of the final game.

With former Sixers assistant Monty Williams dazzling in what should be a Coach of the Year runaway, the Suns are going to be a problem for anyone. But any time LeBron James is brushed from a tournament, whether early or late, the bracket suddenly seems less cluttered.

“I think a lot of the world is surprised when the defending champions go out as early as they did,” Green said. “Miami (the defending Eastern Conference champion) went out early, too. It happens. It’s a long season. Injuries happen. The healthiest team is the one that is usually playing the best.

“As a fan, I love watching basketball. I love watching competitive basketball and I am rooting for underdogs. But as a player, I am not focused on any other team. I am focused on Philly. But obviously things like that are wake-up calls for younger guys. And I tell them, ‘Don’t take this for granted, because you never know when you will have this opportunity again.’”

Even with Joel Embiid partaking in some practice drills Friday while he waits for a knee issue to settle, the Sixers aren’t fully healthy. They went small-ish without Embiid and blew away mediocre Washington in Game 5 Wednesday. But the Hawks are not the Wizards.

With natural scorer Trae Young, Nate McMillan’s team is explosive. If Young is allowed to roll downhill, he’ll torment the

Sixers with floaters while also showing the ability to flip quick lobs to Clint Capela or John Collins for dunks. If the Sixers collapse inside, Young can kick it out to Bogdan Bogdanovic, who is making $18 million a year to drain three-pointers.

If Embiid plays, the Hawks will have no answer at the defensive end. Still, it’s the NBA quarterfinals, and the NBA quarterfinals are not supposed to be easy.

“I’ve always said about great scorers that if you can slow them down that easily, they wouldn’t be great scorers,” coach Doc Rivers said. “So Trae will make it difficult. But they have so many other guys he can pass to, shooters and a ton of playmakers on the floor. That’s what makes him so difficult. You just can’t leave guys like we did in the Washington series and then go trap. You can’t do that against Atlanta.”

The Hawks have weaknesses, as do the Sixers, as do most of the teams Green has played for, even if he is one of only four players ever to win a championship with three different operations.

But there are the Lakers, gone. There is the Heat, gone. There is Steph Curry, gone. There are Brooklyn and Milwaukee about to exhaust each other for a while. And there are the Sixers, playing a team with a star lacking postseason experience and an interim head coach.

Some years, things just open for a team.

It might be one reason why Howard closed his press briefing Friday with an attempted sing-along.

“Come on,” he said. “Play it: ‘Ain’t no stopping us now … ain’t no stopping us now.’”

With that, one of the two Sixers on the last NBA championship team laughed out loud.

Maybe he feels something.

Maybe he feels this is one season that won’t end in horror.