There are nights when you watch the Sixers on their home court and wonder how so many people could have been so wrong. Or maybe you don’t wonder. Maybe it is the most human of all outcomes: a lack of vision, an inability to accurately gauge the consequences of our actions, the insistence that one marshmallow now is worth the sacrifice of many more later.
Whatever the case, the scene at the Wells Fargo Center on Wednesday night was another glimpse at the materialization of a future that was always more imminent than not. There were Franco Harris and Evander Holyfield sitting behind the baseline and Cole Hamels getting a standing ovation and a couple of Australians explaining to an arena full of Americans how to eat something called a meat pie.