{"id":854463,"date":"2026-09-20T15:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T15:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/854463\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T15:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T15:46:12","slug":"we-needed-that-boston-series-to-have-one-great-just-us-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/854463\/","title":{"rendered":"We Needed That Boston Series to Have One Great Just-Us Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I wouldn\u2019t necessarily say I\u2019ve spent the summer coming to terms with the LeBron James-Jaylen Brown era in Philadelphia. In truth I haven\u2019t really thought about it all that much, at least not compared to how much I\u2019ve thought about the Phillies\u2019 rotation reliability shuffle, the generational implications of Olivia Rodrigo and Ella Langley, and my own creeping mortality<\/a>. It\u2019s not like the same thoughts of LeBron\u2019s smiling-through-it-all face in a Sixers uniform that left me somewhat disquieted in July are giving me the warm fuzzies in September.<\/p>\n

But I guess I\u2019m most of the way to acceptance, if nothing else. I\u2019ve had enough conversations with friends, family and colleagues incredulous that I\u2019m not just 100% over-the-moon<\/a> about everything that I\u2019m bored with my own explanations of why. It\u2019s going to be interesting, it\u2019s going to be fun, and it\u2019s going to be different. If it\u2019s not going to be truly emotionally and narratively satisfying, in the way that we\u2019ve suffered for the past 15 years in the hopes that the end of the story would ultimately end up being, well… I guess I have come to terms with the fact that at this point, it wasn\u2019t going to end like that anyway.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s why I have spent the summer being more and more grateful that before everything changed forever with this team, we at least got that fucking Boston series.<\/p>\n

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I haven\u2019t revisited the series yet in full the way Mike and Spike have the past few episodes \u2014 I still need at least a couple more Sixers Augusts, maybe even one or two in 2027, before I\u2019m ready to dive back in that deep. But I don\u2019t really need to, or even much want to yet. I like keeping it sorta foggy in the remembered haze through which we all initially watched it back in May, not expecting anything remotely like what was happening, not understanding how or why it was unfolding like it was, not particularly believing any of it was real until it was almost over, and then not totally believing it even then. I like kinda forgetting about it sometimes, and then remembering: Yes, Tony Wroten, the Philadelphia 76ers really did come back from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Boston Celtics in the NBA playoffs.<\/p>\n

And I even like how everything that happened immediately after served to make an already gauzy memory even cobwebbier. It\u2019s tough to remember the specifics of the greatest comeback in modern Sixers history when directly following it, they got steamrolled 4-0 by the Knicks on their very loud way to their very loud championships, and then the Sixers responded by trading for their historic rival\u2019s longest-tenured player and then signing the greatest player of the entire 21st century for the veteran minimum. The Celtics series was only four and a half months ago, but now that it\u2019s been buried by all this other shit, it feels like at least a presidential term in the rearview.<\/p>\n

But the farther we get from it, the more I\u2019m convinced it was a moment we absolutely had to have. Whether or not The Process is officially over, everything about the Sixers \u2014 from the team itself to its media coverage and particularly to its fanbase \u2013 is about to shift to something essentially unrecognizable from where it was during the Hinkie years. It\u2019s about to be something totally new, with a whole bunch of totally new people. And that\u2019s fine; that\u2019s even exciting (and probably overdue) in a lot of ways. But it also means that the thing we had, the thing we shared for the last 13 years, is largely done with. It means the book\u2019s closed on all that now.<\/p>\n

Which is why I\u2019m so grateful we got the final chapter we did. In terms of the larger basketball world, the Sixers-Celtics\u2019 2026 series will probably be mostly forgotten \u2014 it was just a first-round series, after all, with the winner eliminated immediately after, and the whole thing wildly overshadowed by one of the most attention-hogging championship runs in all of modern American sports. But for those of us who\u2019ve been around since the beginning, it was a truly great memory that was truly ours, with Joel as the conquering hero and Tyrese as the Prince Who Was Promised and even Our Once and Always Dark Lord Sam Hinkie as the post-series victory-lapper<\/a>. The more it\u2019s memory-holed by everyone else, including by the folks just showing up to the party, the more it will settle permanently into our hearts and souls, as the had-to-be-there moment of true sports greatness that now allows us to be able to move on to whatever\u2019s next.<\/p>\n

\"ANNOUNCEMENT:ANNOUNCEMENT: Live Ricky VII With Dominick Barlow<\/a><\/p>\n

And imagine if we didn\u2019t get it? Imagine if the Celtics finished us in five, as in 99 out of 100 available universes they most likely do, and then we somehow still get Jaylen Brown and LeBron James in the offseason. Then these guys aren\u2019t just our potential saviors, they\u2019re also basically our bail bondsmen, yanking us out of total irrelevancy. Then Joel Embiid isn\u2019t just the guy who\u2019s never led the Sixers to the championship, he\u2019s the guy who\u2019s never even led the team to a convincing Sixers playoff series win. Then the rest of us really did spend 13 years waiting around for a deus ex machina that really had nothing to do with anything, with zero postseason achievements worth remembering in the years between. It\u2019s fucking depressing to think about.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s also all sort of moot, because not only did that Celtics series actually happen \u2014 we\u2019re pretty sure \u2014 but it was probably a large part of the reason that the Jaylen Brown trade and the LeBron James signing unfolded after. So not only did that series give us our truly happiest memory \u2014 by some definitions, maybe our only truly happy memory \u2014 of the Process Sixers era, it also gets a little bit of the credit for whatever positive (or negative) things happen from here. It\u2019s guaranteed to always be a crucial, inextricable part of our timeline. It\u2019ll get a scene in the movie. It has to.<\/p>\n

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I don\u2019t need to spend the last days of this summer thinking about the Sixers-Celtics series, because I\u2019ll think of it plenty over the course of next season. When LeBron posts a triple-double to beat the Knicks in front of an arena full of screaming Sixers fans wearing No. 23 jerseys and the ESPN first-takers spend the next day talking about him finally bringing a winning culture to Philadelphia, the somewhat mixed feelings all of it invariably inspires in me will ultimately lead me back to the true warm fuzzies of Sixers-Celtics \u2014 and how that series not only validated Process Trusters\u2019 pasts, but allowed us to have a path to a real future. And then I\u2019ll be the one smiling through it all, still in disbelief that this is my 40-year-old life.<\/p>\n

Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the \u2018If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders\u2019 section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold<\/a> and can also read him at Billboard.<\/a><\/p>\n