After T.J. McConnell's buzzer-beating game-winner lifted the Philadelphia 76ers over the New York Knicks on Wednesday, it officially became impossible not to trust the process.
Not because the Sixers' 98-97 triumph produced win No. 11 on the season, one more than they amassed in all of 2015-16, and not because Joel Embiid soundly outplayed Kristaps Porzingis.
Instead, the true validation of a painful, much-derided rebuilding process was in the way it produced a Sixers team so profoundly different than the one New York put on the floor.
Call it a juxtaposition of patience and impatience. Or, if you want to get more graphic, think of the Sixers' and Knicks' organizational philosophies like this: One has shown an uncommon willingness to take lumps, while the other has avoided growing pains at all costs, only to inflict mortal, franchise-killing wounds upon itself.
The contrasting results of those processes (yeah, I said it again) was evident after McConnell's mid-range winner fell, when everyone in a three-mile radius celebrated a fourth win in ...
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Article written by Grant Hughes