In the midst of an exciting and drama filled season in Philadelphia, the Sixers have high expectations to close out the year strong.
For the first time in years, the Philadelphia 76ers came into the season with real expectations. Mike Belardino, a 20-year-old exercise major from Bensalem always has high hopes for his favorite basketball team. “I would like to see them make the finals this year, I expect all of my sports teams to make it every year” said Belardino.
With a young core built around center Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, many fans believed that this team was the best it’s been since Allen Iverson graced the floor in the early 2000’s.
Ryan Jacobs, a 24 year old communications major from Fallsington, believes that Simmons is the key to the team’s success thus far this season. “It’s his versatility” he said. “He can play any position and the offense runs through him.”
Despite a bit of a rough start to the season the team has started to gel and just past the halfway point of the season currently have a record of 34-19, which is good enough for the fifth best record in the Eastern Conference.
If the playoffs started today the Sixers would be in and looking to build off of last season when they won a playoffs series against the Miami Heat before losing in the second round to the Boston Celtics.
The Sixers knew that in order to advance further in the playoffs they would need to add a third star to the team. They did that by making a trade for Jimmy Butler.
On Nov. 12 NBA.com reported that the Sixers had traded Jerryd Bayless, Robert Covington, Dario Saric and a 2022 2nd round draft pick to the Minnesota Timberwolves in exchange for Jimmy Butler and Justin Patton. Since the trade the team has been quite successful.
Despite the success, not everyone was a fan of the trade. Nolan Gromlich, a 19 year old business administration major from Washington’s Crossing, questions Jimmy Butler’s fit with the team. “The trade improved the team, but he isn’t the piece we needed” said Gromich.
Butler has brought a bit of drama with him to the city of brotherly love. According to an NBCSports.com report, on January 4th Butler aggressively challenged coach Brett Brown about his role within the team’s offense. While that incident hasn’t seemed to hurt the team’s success, it could play a role down the line since Butler will be a free agent after the season.
While many thought that the Butler trade would be the only major change this season, the team had other ideas. Rather than stay complacent and watch competitors get better the Sixers went out and made yet another trade for a big name player.
Wednesday morning Sixers fans awoke to huge breaking news as Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.com reported that the Sixers had made a trade for Tobias Harris, Mike Scott and Boban Marjanovic, with Harris being the biggest piece in the trade. In order to make this trade happen the Sixers had to send the Los Angeles Clippers Wilson Chandler, Landry Shamet, Mike Muscala, two future first round draft picks and two future second round draft picks.
This type of aggressive move makes it clear the Sixers management wants to compete for a championship this year.
The home stretch of the season will soon be here after the February 15-17th All Star break. After the strong start to the season, the Sixers are looking to finish the 2018-19 season even stronger than they’ve started it and build some momentum for what hopes to be a finals run in this years playoffs.