Philadelphia 76ers coach Brett Brown acknowledged that after he told his players and the media before the season began that the goal was to make the playoffs, it “wasn’t well received” by many in the cautious front office.
Turns out, Brown had the pulse of The Process.
Not only are the Sixers headed to the post-season, they are poised to make some noise.
J.J. Redick on Sunday scored 18 points as the surging 76ers matched a franchise record with their 14th consecutive victory, 109-97 over the Dallas Mavericks.
Ben Simmons added 16 points, seven rebounds and nine assists, while Robert Covington had 15 points and 10 rebounds.
Two years after going 10-72, the Sixers (50-30) clinched home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs and secured their first 50-win season since Allen Iverson’s 2000-2001 team, which lost in the NBA Finals.
“In our profession, Brett has become a legend,” Dallas coach Rick Carlisle said. “He’s just been unshakable as a leader, and as a guy that’s always pushed his teams to always play at their highest capacity in terms of energy and effort... They’ve added a few veterans and they’ve done a great job with the draft.”
The only other time the Sixers won 14 straight in a single season, Dr J and Moses Malone delivered Philadelphia their last NBA Finals title in 1982-1983.
“I wouldn’t want to play these guys in the first round with them having home-court [advantage],” Carlisle said. “Not in this place.”
However, Brown, now 125-283 in his fifth year in Philly, is still taking the long view after experiencing the pain of The Process’ early years.
“We are growing a culture and, oh by the way, we’ve won 50 games, and we have home-court advantage and we’ve tied a record. That’s true, but that is never really what’s most on my mind,” Brown said.
Harrison Barnes scored 21 points on nine-of-25 shooting, while Dennis Smith Jr added 20 points for the Mavericks, who have lost three straight and six of seven.
“I thought we played pretty hard,” Carlisle said. “This is a very hard team to play.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
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Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier