Despite the drama with Fultz, the Sixers were progressing just as Bryan Colangelo had hoped. In early October, a week before the season began, he signed Joel Embiid to a five-year contract extension. Doing so was dangerous. The deal was for the maximum amount permitted by the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, a total of $146.5 million, and would climb to $176 million if Embiid hit certain markers (such as being named All-NBA)—despite Embiid to that point having played in only 31 games. Colangelo, aware of the risk, stuffed the deal with all sorts of injury protections, which were outlined across thirty-five detailed pages.1 Two months into the 2017–2018 season no one cared. Embiid had become a bully in the post, adding some punch to his finesse, and the combination of his size and guile made the Sixers’ defense impenetrable. Just twenty-three, he’d already established himself as one of the best players in the league. The combination of his contract and performance solidified his stats as the most important person in the franchise and the man who’d carry the Sixers into their next phase.
Joining him there would be Ben Simmons, who, after missing his entire rookie season due to a foot injury, was, like Embiid, healthy and having no issues adjusting to the NBA. In a way, Simmons had benefited from the ability to spend a year learning about the league without having to step onto the court. Brown by this point had developed a playbook for keeping injured young stars engaged. “Unfortunately, I had a lot of practice,” he said. He’d call Simmons into his office to study tapes of Magic Johnson. Sometimes during games he’d ask him for a play call. If Simmons wasn’t with the team on a road trip, Brown would tell him to text his thoughts during the game.
Simmons enjoyed it all, but he struggled with the solitude that came with not being an active part of the team. “You’re just doing the same thing every day,” he said. “I had those days where I just wouldn’t want to even go in.” He tried combating the boredom by spending hours acting like a kid on vacation—watching South Park, playing Call of Duty, buying Nerf guns at Walmart—but the distractions carried him only so far. His whole life had revolved around basketball, and about making the NBA, and he’d finally made it—only to see it all taken away.
“I came to the States and no one knew who I was, then they kind of do, then I get injured and no one talks about you for a while,” Simmons said at the time. “So it’s kind of like now I’ve got to build myself back up.”
He scored 18 points and pulled down 10 rebounds in his debut, and after the game, a five-point loss in Washington, he told reporters: “It felt like I was playing [NBA] 2K.” Three games later he recorded a triple double—21 points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists—becoming one of the youngest and quickest to do so in NBA history. “We knew he was special the moment he stepped onto the floor,” said Richaun Holmes, a center who played two seasons with Simmons in Philadelphia. Comparisons to LeBron James began popping up. Simmons, barely twenty-one years old, was already a physical force, but he also seemed to possess some of LeBron’s other otherworldly qualities, both tangible (flinging pinpoint passes across the court) and not (manipulating a game’s tempo), and he knew it too.
“It’s easier to control things here than in college,” Simmons told David Patrick, his godfather and former college assistant coach, after an early-season win in Dallas.
Philadelphia entered the season pegged by Las Vegas oddsmakers as a 42.5-win team, and played at that pace for the season’s first few months. The second half brought change, though. Embiid being released from his strict minutes restriction helped, and some savvy moves from Colangelo fortified the team along the edges. The first had come months earlier, when he lured veteran sharpshooter J.J. Redick with a one-year, $23 million offer. Redick, with his machinelike accuracy and ceaseless darting around the floor, immediately became a focal point of the Sixers’ offense, opening up the court for Embiid and Simmons. Colangelo also scooped up Ersan Ilyasova and Marco Belinelli, two veterans marksmen who’d been recently waived by their respective teams and who fit snugly in the pass-happy scheme Brown had spent years rearing. The additional depth and shooting helped the Sixers end the season on a 16-game win streak, despite Embiid missing the final eight games with an orbital fracture suffered in a freak collision with a teammate.
At 52–30, the Sixers finished with nearly twice as many wins as the year before and third in the Eastern Conference. It was their best output since 2001, when Allen Iverson led them to the Finals. Five years after Sam Hinkie’s decision to tear everything down, the Sixers were back in the postseason and the talk of the league. They were big and fast and explosive and, with Simmons leading the charge, beating teams by double digits. With the LeBron-led Cavaliers flailing and Boston Celtics star Kyrie Irving out with a knee injury, some experts even viewed them as the favorites to represent the conference in the Finals.
“The notion of the playoffs for me doesn’t make me do somersaults,” Brown told reporters toward the end of the regular season. “I want more.”
* * *
Brown’s playoff debut came on a Saturday night against the Miami Heat. Embiid, still recovering from the facial injury, welcomed the raucous home crowd by fulfilling the pregame tradition of ringing the team’s 350-pound Liberty Bell replica. He wore a white Phantom of the Opera mask—he’d dubbed himself “Phantom of The Process” after being prescribed a mask following the injury—and the crowd exploded and the Sixers rode that energy and a dominant Simmons performance (17 points, 14 assists, and nine rebounds) to a resounding 130–103 win.
Game 2 followed a different script. The Sixers missed on 29 of their 36 three-point attempts and lost by 10. Afterward Embiid expressed his frustration on Instagram: “Fucking sick and tired of being babied,” he wrote before deleting the post and clarifying his feelings to ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne. “I promised the city the playoffs and I’m not on the court. I wish more than anything that I was out there. I just want the green light to play.” Embiid had always fought the limitations imposed on him by the Sixers, going back to his refusal to wear a walking boot during his rookie season, and little had changed over the years. Now he had a new contract, which, combined with his skills and a budding friendship with minority owner Michael Rubin, only bestowed upon him more power, to both defy authority and command it.
Despite being listed as doubtful on the day of Game 3, Embiid returned to the floor in Miami. He wore a mask made from a mix of carbon fiber and a substance called polycarbonate, with protective eyewear built in. Embiid hated it, but he was told his type of fracture left him susceptible to reinjury. In any event, he adjusted quickly, dropping 23 points and dishing out four assists in a 128–108 win, and relishing every minute of his playoff debut. He hushed the Heat crowd after drilling three-pointers and stared down Heat players after swatting their shots. He took particular enjoyment in limiting Hassan Whiteside (five points in 13 minutes), an underperforming and overpaid Heat center he had squabbled with in the past.
“Whiteside is sooo bad!” Embiid exclaimed to his teammates in the locker room after the win.
Game 4 was close, but the Sixers squeaked out a 106–102 comeback win. The series moved back to Philadelphia for Game 5. Another victory would send the team into the second round.
Moments before tip-off, a rush of energy surged through the charged-up Philly crowd. Hours earlier, the Philadelphia-raised rapper Meek Mill had been granted bail, ending a five-month prison term. Meek Mill, thirty, had been convicted in 2008 on charges related to the possession of drugs and guns (he denied the charges and in July 2019 was granted a new trial and judge by the Superior Court of Pennsylvania). He served eight months in prison and was placed on probation for five years—a period that was repeatedly extended—and in November 2017 a Philadelphia judge sentenced him to two to four years in prison for a pair of parole violations. He’d posted an Instagram video of himself popping wheelies on a dirt bike in upper Manhattan and was arrested that night, after performing on The Tonight Show, for reckless endangerment. His case, and life, had become a symbol for the United States’ flawed criminal justice system, especially in regards to black men.
Michael Rubin had become one of his most public advocates. A stocky forty-six-year-old college dropout from Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, who preferred hooded sweatshirts to suits, he’d made billions of dollars in e-commerce. In 2011, he chipped in for a minority share of the Sixers. He was rarely present during Sam Hinkie’s reign, but now the Sixers were rising. They had two young stars, both of whom had cracked the top 10 in jerseys sold. Only two NBA teams (the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers) sold more merchandise during the 2017–2018 season. Their attendance had soared—an average of 20,329 fans per game, the third-best mark in the league—and so had their local TV ratings (by 45 percent over the previous season). Their road games routinely sold out. The days of 10-win seasons and five-cent tickets were long gone. The Sixers were ascendant, and everyone wanted a piece. Rubin was no different.2 As the Sixers became more prominent he started showing up to games and team events more frequently, befriending Embiid and loudly cheering him and his teammates on from a courtside seat.
Rubin first met Meek Mill at the NBA’s All-Star Weekend in 2013. The rapper peppered him with business questions. The two stayed in touch, speaking on the phone a few times a week.
“I didn’t really know anything about the criminal justice system when all this happened,” Rubin recalled. “I didn’t know anything about probation, and I didn’t really care.” Meek Mill’s case shook him. “Meek used to always say to me, ‘There’s two Americas.’ I’d be like, ‘Dude, there’s one America,’” Rubin said. “He was right. I was wrong. There’s America, and then there’s black America. I didn’t agree with him, but he proved to be right.”
Rubin visited Meek Mill in prison about a dozen times over the ensuing months and tried using his power and resources to fight on the rapper’s behalf. The two got to work on creating an organization to advocate for criminal justice reform, but the case also presented Rubin with an opportunity to boost his profile. A publicist pitched media outlets on stories about Rubin and the battle he was waging. Reporters were asked to link to Rubin’s newly created Instagram account.
Rubin had learned in the week leading into Game 5 that Meek Mill could be released any day. At around 3 p.m., a few hours before tip-off, he was told that bail had been granted.
“I want him at the game tonight,” he told an associate over the phone. “Can I go pick him up or not? Will he be at the game or not?” He called Josh Harris, who owned Harrah’s casino, which sat across the street from the state prison in Chester, Pennsylvania. Harris arranged for a helicopter to pick up Meek Mill and shuttle him and Rubin to a Philadelphia helipad. A black Chevrolet delivered them to the players’ entrance at Wells Fargo Center. “He’s gotta get a shower, and we gotta go win this game,” Rubin told a group of reporters waiting in the parking lot.
“I need clothes,” Meek Mill, wearing jeans and a solid burgundy shirt, said. He was asked how he was doing. “I feel great,” he said.
Led by a phalanx of handlers and security, Meek Mill strolled through the arena’s hallways and into the Sixers’ locker room. His music had become the team’s soundtrack, with Simmons and Embiid even visiting him in prison. He put on an Embiid jersey and was ushered to a courtside seat. A crowd of fans and media members, almost all carrying cameras and phones, congregated on the sideline, angling for a glimpse. The in-arena announcer welcomed him home. The lights went dark, and the team’s Liberty Bell was rolled out toward midcourt. Carrying a small, makeshift hammer, Meek Mill strolled out to the spotlight. The crowd stood. The celebration had begun.
The game remained tight for the first half, but the Sixers caught fire in the third quarter and held off a late Heat really for a 104–91 series-clinching win. Confetti was fired into the air and the sold-out crowd belted out the lyrics to the team’s victory song—Clap your hands, everybody / For Philadelphia 76ers—as it flowed out of the Wells Fargo Center speakers. In their plush locker room, Brown gathered his team. After every win, he would choose a “player of the game” to ring a miniature Liberty Bell. Redick, who had led the Sixers with 27 points, was called up. He placed a hand on Brown’s shoulder. “Brett, congrats on your first career playoff series victory,” he said, and handed the bell back. Embiid, standing behind Brown, and Robert Covington, a wing who’d been with the Sixers since 2014, leapt with glee while emptying bottles of water and a chocolate milk onto Brown. “Ring that fucking bell!” some players hollered. Brown, the lone survivor from the original Process team, soaked and shouting gibberish in his Bostralian accent, giddily complied.
“I was hired in 2013 and I sat with Josh Harris and David Blitzer and a few of the other owners and we talked about the vision, what we hoped to build, and through rough times and through adversity for sure, we didn’t blink,” Brown, white towel draped over his shoulder and gray hair soaked, said at the postgame podium. “We stayed strong in what we were trying to do.”
Embiid, an All-Star on a max contract and fresh off his first series victory with a team that looked like it could go to the Finals, shared a similar thought. “Two years ago we won 10 games,” he said. “To be in this position, I’m just excited.”
* * *
Next up for the Sixers were the depleted Celtics. They’d won 55 games in the regular season, but Irving was now joining All-Star Gordon Hayward, who had fractured his leg on the season’s opening night, on the sideline while a balky hamstring had left young forward Jaylen Brown’s status in doubt. The Sixers opened the series as heavy favorites—only to fall flat in Game 1. They misfired on 21 of their 26 three-point attempts and had no answer for Celtics rookie Jayson Tatum, the player the Celtics had chosen over Markelle Fultz, who racked up 28 points.
In Game 2, the Sixers came out swinging the ball, making their shots and suffocating the Celtics’ offense, taking a 48–26 lead midway through the second quarter.
The Celtics responded with an electric 21–5 run to close the half, abetted by Brown’s refusal to call a timeout and throw a life vest to his drowning players. The two teams battled in the second half, but a driving layup from Al Horford past the slower Embiid with just over eight seconds sealed a Game 2 victory.
The series moved to Philadelphia for Games 3 and 4. One more win would put the Celtics up 3–0, a deficit no NBA team had ever come back from.
The game remained close throughout, with Embiid dunking and drop-stepping and Simmons bouncing back from an ugly Game 2 performance (one point in nearly 31 minutes of action). But Tatum repeatedly punctured the Sixers defense with a series of smooth jumpers and slithery drives, and a series of careless mistakes—a season-long issue—cost them late in the fourth quarter. A miscue between Redick and Simmons with six seconds left led to an errant Redick pass, which the Celtics converted into a breakaway layup to take a two-point lead with 1.7 seconds left, stunning the Wells Fargo Center crowd. Brown called a timeout to draw up a play. Simmons took the ball on the right sideline, parallel to the top of the key. Belinelli, inserted into the game for his shooting, sprung open and curled toward the right corner. He caught the ball with his feet brushing across the three-point line and, while fading into the Sixers bench, flicked it up toward the hoop. The buzzer sounded as the ball went in. Belinelli’s teammates mobbed him. Brown walked off the floor and to the locker room. A Sixers game operations worker launched pieces of red, white, and blue confetti into the air.
“We had drawn it to be a walk-off three,” Brown said after the game. “And I thought it was.”
But Belinelli’s feet had been on the line when he released the ball. The shot, counting for two points, had only tied the game.
It took about seven minutes to clean up the papier-mâché and begin overtime. Belinelli drilled a jumper and Redick buried a three to give the Sixers a five-point lead. But once again the Celtics fought back. Their spread offense left Embiid on an island and opened lanes for Tatum to attack. He laid the ball in with 55 seconds remaining to cut the lead to two, his fifth and sixth points of the extra period. On the next possession Celtics point guard Terry Rozier picked off a lazy pass from Embiid, which led to an Al Horford free throw, trimming the Sixers’ lead to one. Embiid on the next possession misfired on a fadeaway jumper. Simmons grabbed the rebound with 19 seconds left and elected to shoot instead of kicking it out to kill the clock. His floater came up short. The Celtics called timeout. Boston head coach Brad Stevens had Marcus Morris take the ball out deep on the right sideline. Everyone except Horford, who Stevens knew would have the smaller Covington guarding him, was told to run back toward the opposite end of the court. Horford sealed Covington with his left arm and Morris tossed a lob pass over the top. With Covington’s teammates all having evacuated the paint, there was no one to help him fend off Horford. He caught the ball at the rim and laid it in.
The Sixers had one more chance. Brown called another timeout. From half-court, Simmons tossed a soft, one-handed pass to Embiid at the foul line. Horford pounced in front of him and deflected it away. Seconds later the Celtics were celebrating a 101–98 win. The Sixers knew what this meant.
“Teams that are down 3–0 [in the series] have a record of 129–0. Just think about that number,” Brown told reporters after the game. But he also said he wasn’t willing to give up. “The number to me, zero, happens more out of spirit than talent. There’s a breaking point we all have and I believe that, if we maintain our spirit, why couldn’t we be the one?”
Motivating players had always been a strength of Brown’s, but he decided to make a tactical adjustment for Game 4 too. T. J. McConnell, a former undrafted point guard who had impressed the Sixers during a 2015 Summer League audition and earned a contract that preseason, was inserted into the starting lineup. The son of a high school coach from Pittsburgh, McConnell didn’t boast the skillset typically found in NBA players. He was barely six feet tall and not a good three-point shooter. But he was quick, tenacious—he’d pop 5-hour Energy shots before games—and a handful off the dribble. He reminded Brown of himself.
“My mindset was to make a lasting impression by how hard I worked on and off the court and try to do things the right way and be a professional,” McConnell recalled. “I had to try and teach myself how to be a professional. We had a very young team and on the court [I was] just being like a Tasmanian devil and running all over the place.”
He, Covington, and Embiid were three of the last holdovers from the Hinkie days,3 and in the years since, McConnell had become a cult hero among Sixers fans. As the short white guy on the bench, he possessed the stereotypical traits often found in fan favorites,4 but there was more to it. The love affair began with a game-winning buzzer-beater over Knicks All-Star Carmelo Anthony during the 2016–2017 season. McConnell had also appeared as a guest on the Rights to Ricky Sanchez podcast, recorded in October 2017 in front of a live audience, where his sense of humor and affinity for profanity further endeared him to the most ardent section of the team’s fan base.5
“The facility we were at for practice my first season, that’s part of The Process, too,” McConnell said at one point, referring to the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, where the Sixers previously rented space. “I walk into the facility and we got doctors playing, saying, ‘Get the fuck off the court, we’re tryin’ to practice here.’ And I mean, they’re at one end and I’m at the other and I was like, ‘No wonder we’ve only won 10 fucking games this year.’”
Most important, McConnell was in on it all. He knew when to take himself seriously and when to not and when to seem humble and when to boast, and he always seemed genuine. “I’m not supposed to be here,” he’d often say of his NBA career. He’d never forgotten the email that his college coach had received from a fan after signing him: “I didn’t know we were recruiting waterboys?”
Now he was starting a win-or-go-home playoff game, and his presence was immediately felt. He pushed the pace. He knifed into the paint. He pressured Rozier full-court. He scored a career-high 19 points, along with eight rebounds and five assists. Fans chanted his name. The Sixers extended their season with a 103–92 win.
The teams flew back to Boston for Game 5, which followed a familiar script. A close first quarter. The Celtics led by nine at halftime. The Sixers cut it to one entering the fourth quarter. Embiid was great. So was Tatum. Tied with 6:41 left. Two Simmons free throws. A Tatum dunk. Four straight points from Embiid. A three from Sixers forward Dario Šarić—one-point Sixers lead, 3:30 left. Tie game, one minute remaining. A Šarić turnover. With 22 seconds left, Tatum cut backdoor for a layup to give the Celtics a two-point lead. The Sixers called timeout. With his season on the line, Brown called for Embiid to get the ball in the post. Embiid walked onto the court, leaving his mask on the bench. “I felt like this could be the last possession of the season so I needed to be at my best,” he would tell reporters later. He fielded the ball a foot below the right elbow. Celtics center Aron Baynes, 6-foot-10 and 260 pounds of muscle, bodied him up. Embiid took three dribbles to the left, his right shoulder and Baynes’s chest crashing into one another like a battering ram against a metal door. No whistle was blown, and Embiid muscled the ball up off the backboard. It fell off the rim. Embiid tapped the ball up against the glass, corralled it off the bounce, and tried gathering himself. Rozier darted to the paint. He knocked the ball off Embiid’s shin and out of bounds. Embiid, trying to lunge after it, collapsed to the floor.
Rozier extended the Celtics’ lead to four with a couple of made free throws. Redick buried a quick three. The Sixers fouled Marcus Smart, who split two free throws. The score was 114–112, Celtics. Out of timeouts, Brown had Simmons try a full-court pass to Covington. Smart picked it off. The buzzer sounded.
As Boston celebrated, Simmons walked over to Embiid. “There’s gonna be a lot of [championship] rings on this before we’re done,” he told him, holding up a hand.
He had good reasons to be optimistic. It had been a disappointing finish but a magical season. Entering the year, the Sixers’ goal had been to make the playoffs. Now here they were, upset that they’d only advanced one round. They were young and talented and exciting and their future was bright. After the loss even Embiid couldn’t help but think about how far he and the organization had come. And he knew exactly who to thank.
“Sam Hinkie did an amazing job,” he said from the postgame podium. “Look at everything we’ve got. He’s a big part of it. You got to give him a lot of credit.
“The Process is never going to end. Looking at where we are, it paid off.”
1 For example, if Embiid were to miss 25 or more games in a season due to an injury related to his previous foot and back issues, the Sixers could waive him and reclaim a portion of his salary.
2 “I don’t think Josh [Harris] loves that Rubin gets all that PR for investing, like, $10 to $12 million,” an owner of another NBA team said.
3 Along with Dario Šarić and Richaun Holmes.
4 Unfairly, it should be added, but that’s a deeper conversation to be had in a different place.
5 In October 2019, Rights to Ricky Sanchez listeners inducted him into the show’s Process Hall of Fame.