PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Whether it’s 20,000 or 4,000 fans in the stands — or even the spirit of people watching from home — the Wells Fargo Center is unfriendly territory to NBA visitors.
“Every game we play at home, it just feels like we unbeatable,” Sixers star Joel Embiid said Wednesday in South Philadelphia, after dropping 39 points in 33 minutes against a very shorthanded Brooklyn Nets team.
There isn’t an athlete in Philadelphia professional sports who plays more to the fans than Embiid. He directly credited them for the Sixers’ success at home.
“When you play in Philly,” he said, “they gonna get on you, they gonna boo you. You gotta come out and give 110%, just play very hard and give them everything you got. So I feel like since I’ve been here in Philly, that’s played a huge role of how dominant we’ve been at home, because you don’t wanna get booed. You wanna come out and dominate, enjoy the game. You want the fans to enjoy the game. You wanna win the game.”
Wednesday’s 123-117 win — which the 76ers barely held on to against a Nets squad missing Kevin Durant, James Harden and Blake Griffin — clinched the regular-season series against Brooklyn, giving the Sixers the tie-breaker in the event both teams sport the same record at the end of the regular season.
The Sixers are 21-5 at home this season. They went 29-2 at the Wells Fargo Center in 2019-20, before COVID-19 suspended play — which is why they want to lock down the top seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.
If the Sixers and Nets meet in the playoffs — whether the 76ers are the one-seed or not — Wells Fargo Center will be humming for that matchup. Fans will most definitely try to make things difficult for the Nets’ Durant, Harden and Kyrie Irving, who have not played together in any of the three regular-season meetings.
In fact, Durant hasn’t played in any of them, for various reasons. But Sixers fans still made sure he heard them Wednesday while he stood on the sidelines — chanting “KD sucks.”