After three years of losing on purpose to stockpile young talent, the surging Sixers’ controversial strategy is finally yielding on-court dividends
The Philadelphia 76ers won for the seventh time in nine games on Wednesday with a 94-89 victory over the Toronto Raptors, limiting the Eastern Conference’s highest-scoring team to more than 20 points below their season average. The club’s emerging franchise player, the 7ft 2in wunderkind Joel Embiid, finished with 26 points in 26 minutes, including a crucial last-minute blocked shot and a pair of free throws to ice the game. It was a gut-check win over an opponent who’d had their number in 14 straight meetings. “I don’t think it’s a fluke,” said Embiid, Philadelphia’s talismanic first-year center. “We’re competing. We’re winning games. We’re playing great defense. We finally found what we’ve been looking for.”
The Sixers have asked more of their supporters than most teams would dare over the past three years, disemboweling their roster and effectively losing games on purpose with the aim of stockpiling draft picks and assets over time: a long-term strategy that’s come to be known simply, affectionately and begrudgingly, as the Process. They went a combined 47-199 over that span – finishing with 19, 18 and 10 victories, respectively – poor enough to land the draft picks that became Embiid, Jahlil Okafor and Ben Simmons, the No1 overall pick in June’s draft whose superstar potential has had scouts drooling for years.
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