[Official Philadelphia 76ers Thread] - Show Ya Luv!

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Sixers CEO Adam Aron (left) has been in and around the Philadelphia community connecting with fans.

David Dow/NBAE via Getty Images
[h1]New Sixers ownership doing best to revamp team's mojo[/h1]

Posted Jan 30 2012 10:25AM

They have seen this before in Philadelphia.

They saw it when Pat Croce rappelled down the scoreboard of what was then called the First Union Center, when Allen Iverson was young and Larry Brown was dealin' out his coaching genius, and Dikembe Mutombo was wagging his finger, and the 76ers were the hot ticket in town. They saw it when Charles Barkley was young and dunking at the Spectrum.They saw it when the Doctor and McGinnis and a young guard named Doug Collins brought their fathers and mothers out of their seats a generation ago.

New is not new when you're a city that's been waiting 30 years for another ring.

But for all of its bluster and tough-guy stance, Philly is a town with a soft spot. It's a sucker, really, for anyone who exhibits true passion and who knows his or her way around town. It's why people loved Eagles like Chuck Bednarik and Brian Dawkins, but didn't wholly embrace Donovan McNabb. They love gritty guys like Jimmy Rollins and can't be bothered by standoffish guys like Pat Burrell. Iverson generated a love from fans long past his greatest effectiveness because he really did play every game like it was his last. LB was nuts in a lot of ways, but you knew he really cared, would give anything to win and play basketball the right way.

So, Adam Aron has them at hello.

"Our job was to reconnect the city with this team," Aron said Saturday.

Aron is the new CEO and co-owner of the 76ers -- it says so on his Twitter handle (@SixersCEOAdam). He does not own the majority share in the team -- that belongs to Joshua Harris, who brought Aron and a dozen other partners in last June to officially buy the Sixers from Comcast-Spectacor, the franchise's previous owners. The group is a 21st century Who's Who of Philly movers and shakers -- those who were born there, like Aron and megastar actor/rapper Will Smith; those who went to school there, like Harris and co-managing owner David Blitzer, who are both Wharton graduates; and those who made a fortune there, like Michael Rubin, who founded the company GSI Commerce in nearby King of Prussia and sold it for a cool $2.3 billion to eBay.

They are the Tipping Point, Wiz Wit. And Aron spreads the cheese.

He is everywhere at what is now called Wells Fargo Center, handing out his cards, shaking hands with fans, taking notes, Tweeting his heart out, making converts, as he says, one handshake at a time. And he is slowly trying to revive a fan base that has fallen off severely in the years since Iverson's due date came and went, and the life went out of the franchise. It happened slowly -- Croce's energy disappeared when he tried to buy the team outright from former chair Ed Snider, who pushed Croce out. Brown left for the next leg of his peripatetic coaching journey. Iverson was traded to Denver. And the Sixers faded from the city's consciousness.

Their attendance plummeted from an average of 20,560 in 2001-02. It was 19,600 in '03, 17,800 in '05, 15,000 in '07, 14,200 in 2010. Television ratings were on a 10-year slide as well. The Sixers made the playoffs occasionally under a series of coaches, from Jim O'Brien to Mo Cheeks to interim coach Tony DiLeo, who came down from the front office to replace Cheeks in 2008. But with the Phillies becoming a World Series contender and champion, and the Eagles a perennial playoff team, and the Flyers always having a rabid fan base bigger than theirs, and the Big Five -- if not as dominant as in the '70s or '80s, still a factor -- the Sixers had a brand problem.

"When we bought the team, we knew the 76ers had attendance issues," Aron said. "And we thought that the fifth-largest city in the United States, as a sports-crazy town, could certainly support a team in each of the four major professional sports. I spent the first 20 years of my life in Philadelphia, and when I was a kid here, this was a four-team sports town all the way. I used to watch Wilt Chamberlain and Hal Greer play at the old Civic Center. And Billy Cunningham. But in recent years -- I guess ever since Allen Iverson left the team -- it's been trending toward a three-sports town, and, oh yeah, the Sixers play here, too."

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Slowly, the new owners are changing the narrative. It helps that Collins, still beloved here, brought his no-nonsense, embracing style to town last season, and quickly turned a team of underachievers into a winning, exciting team that made the playoffs last year and which has picked up where it left off, blowing out to the Atlantic Division lead and a 10-2 record at home. But Aron has done more than his part as well. The 76ers have sold more than $1 million in ticket sales each of the last three weeks, and are on pace for ticket sales this season -- in 33 home games -- to exceed ticket sales last season in 41 home games.

The Sixers say they are selling 4,000 tickets a day. They're up to 23rd in average attendance, at 14,614 per game, and if that doesn't sound impressive, they were 29th two weeks ago. The announced attendance Saturday against the lowly Pistons was 18,710, though it looked like there were a couple thousand fewer in the stands -- though 16,000 to see a bad Detroit team on a Saturday would still be pretty good. They had a walkup crowd at Wells Fargo of 2,600 on Jan. 10 -- a Tuesday -- to see the Kings, a development so stunning they had to scramble to find enough ticket sellers to handle the rush. Television ratings on Comcast SportsNet are up to an average 2.5 rating locally, up from a 1.6 average rating last season. And Aron has been the face of the work that has gone into saturating the local media, fan base, corporate crowd and anyone who'd listen that this is a team worth supporting.

"He's the hardest working guy I've ever been around in my entire life," Collins said, and he knows from hard workers.

"He sat on my couch in San Diego with (Collins' wife) Kathy and I, and he said 'It's my job to put butts in the seats,'" Collins said. "And I said 'It's my job to win games. And if we can win games, maybe we can both help each other.' I've never seen a guy work any harder to change an environment, to reach out, to always be around. And that's why I love him. He's a special guy."

Gladwell argues in his book The Tipping Point that there are certain types of people -- he calls them Collectors, Mavens and Salesmen -- who can promote an activity or a product simply by word of mouth. They know so many different sets of people from different walks of life that they can spread the word more effectively than an army of PR people. They make something "hot." Harris and his fellow owners may well be such people in Philly. Smith, the "Fresh Prince" who grew up in West Philly, brings the Hollywood crowd and media attention when he and his equally famous wife and co-owner, Jada Pinkett Smith, sit courtside. Harris and his Wharton Connectors know everyone in town -- or at least many of the people who have the kind of money to buy season tickets.

Aron, 57, who went to Harvard, went the corporate route -- Hyatt, United Airlines (he helped the naming rights deal for United Center in Chicago), Norweigian Cruise Lines, Vail Resorts. He's helped run companies where the experience of what you did was more important than anything. You don't take pictures and videos of your workplace; you take pictures and videos of your vacations. So he knows fans don't just want to watch a basketball game; they want to be entertained. (If this sounds like Mark Cuban Philosophy, that crossed my mind, too.)

"I think in Philadelphia, I don't think it's lack of interest," said Lara Price, the 76ers' longtime Senior VP of Business Operations. "You have to have that connection with them, and you have to have that interaction with them. And the thing I've noticed is that Adam has connected with them the way Pat did -- emotionally -- with them. And they feel like he's listening. And that's not to say we didn't listen before, because I've been with every ownership group. We listened ... but it's new. And combined with winning, it's kind of like lightning in a bottle."

Aron says the Wharton/Philly connection has helped -- the new ownership group's initial press conference in August was at the Palestra, and "that site wasn't picked by accident," Aron said -- but the underpinnings came from simple pledges they made to fans. They promised to put a winning team on the court. They would embrace the franchise's deep and winning heritage with multiple video presentations highlighting great players of the past. They would boost the fans' in-game experience -- from confetti and the "ringing" of the Liberty Bell after victories, to the Sixers' version of Milwaukee's Squad 6, The Revolutionaries -- "putting on a happening at the arena that you want to be at," Aron said. They would connect with fans via Twitter and other social media. They would increase the team's marketing efforts with a trio of television ads featuring Collins, the current team and the franchise's history, pointing out the 76ers had the third-most wins and the third-most playoffs appearances in NBA history -- but not to promote upcoming games.

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They further tapped into the franchise's tradition by reviving the team's old fight song,
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 "Here Come The Sixers," to be played during games ("I started singing on the bench," Collins said, "and I lost my focus"). Kate Smith 2.0 is Ayla Brown, a beautiful young woman who sings the national anthem live before every home game, with a synched performance of the anthem by the Philadelphia Orchestra playing on the scoreboard above her. (Aron heard Brown sing in Colorado but had to find her name on YouTube; a classical music afficianado, he wanted to have her backed up by one of the country's best orchestras.)

Lastly, critically, the owners slashed ticket prices throughout the building -- structurally, as opposed to one- or two-game giveaways -- by as much as 56 percent in some of the upper bowl rows. They created different prices in sections instead of one price for every seat from, say, Row A to Row Z. For example, in the 1,200 seats throughout the arena that are just off the court, off the baseline, prices were $101 per seat last season. This season, the first 10 rows are $109 per seat. But the next seven rows behind them are $89 per seat, and the next six rows behind those are $59 per seat. Instead of a family of four paying $404 dollars, as they would have done last season, no matter where they sat in those seats, it can pay as little as $236.

In response to fan input, the Sixers also cut online ticketing fees for its $10 tickets in the upper bowl from more than $8 per transaction to as little as $4 for a single ticket. And they waived the $2.50 the team had been charging fans to print their own tickets at home.

"I mean, it's not like people really couldn't afford $2.50," Aron said. "It's just the principle of the thing. Being charged to push the print button on your own computer, on your own printer, with your own ink and your own paper?"

(This is, still, a business, of course. Tickets for marquee opponents like the Heat and Lakers are on a separate tier, costing $5 or $10 more than the regular price. And the price of courtside seats, suites and boxes weren't cut.)

Under the previous regime, "We didn't really sell a lot of tickets, in the grand scheme of things," Aron said. "And when we did sell them, we sold them off at great discounts. When the new ownership came in, we said we'd rather have an arena that tends to be more full than tends to be empty. And we'd rather have half of something than 100 percent of nothing."

The lockout-compressed schedule produced another potential pitfall. The Sixers had 13 home games in 25 days in January, and not against, shall we say, the cream of the NBA crop. There were a lot of Washingtons and Detroits in there. Not even the most die-hard NBA fan can easily drop whatever it is they do with their discretionary income and their time and go to a game every other day. So throughout January, every ticket in the upper bowl, including those that would normally go for $20, $30 or $45 sold for $17.76 (get it?) or less -- with no online ticket fees.

"That's one of the things from our season ticket holders -- their biggest complaint was 'I can't go to 13 games in a month,'" Price said. "The most we've ever had in one month (before), I think we were at nine one time. And most other times, it's seven. People's lives are very busy. I think we've got a lot of new fans, and a lot of new fans back that had been turned off for one reason or another. They like what they're seeing. They like the stuff they see outside of the basketball game."

The basketball, of course, still matters. The Sixers have been dominant at home, playing an exciting, up-tempo style. Collins has insisted that the team play like one; on any given night, any of six or seven guys could be the leading scorer. They're fifth in the league in points per 100 possessions, at 105.3. They are tied with the Bulls for stingiest defense, allowing just under 87 points per game, and are tied for second in lowest field-goal percentage allowed, .418. They are first in the league in fewest points allowed per 100 possessions, at 92.3 per game. Jrue Holliday and Jodie Meeks are becoming an effective if unheralded backcourt; Andre Iguodala, playing his usual all-around game but averaging just 12.8 points per game, is nonetheless poised to make his first All-Star appearance if the team keeps winning at this rate. Such are the rewards for teams that do well.

The fans have been appreciative.

"I think they're more active in the games," Iguodala said. "If we get down, they stick with us a little bit. Whereas last year, you might have had some boos, even though we were still in the game. This year, even if we go through a spurt where we don't score, we might be down and the other team goes on an 8-0 run, they're still in there with us, which is a good thing. There's been a few times where we've made a big play, and they really, just like, erupted. And it gave us some momentum and we were able to finish out the games."

But with Saturday's win over Detroit, the Sixers have completed their non-conference NBA schedule. How about this for your next eight home games: Orlando tonight, Chicago Wednesday, Miami Friday, the Lakers on Feb. 6, San Antonio on Feb. 8, the Clippers on Feb. 10, Dallas on the 17th (after a three-game road trip) and Oklahoma City on Feb. 29, after a four-game road swing preceding the All-Star break? It's not likely Philly will go through that stretch unscathed. Indeed, given the decided raise in opponent quality, it wouldn't surprise if the Sixers gave back some of their Atlantic Division lead. In short, is this promising new beginning with fans sustainable if the team stops winning?

"Part of the answer is we're all going to find out together," Aron said. "But everything I described did not happen by accident. It came as the result of tons of hard work. So we're going to continue to work hard. And we're going to continue to innovate. And we're going to try our hardest to continue to put exciting, winning basketball on the floor."
 
Let's gooooooooooooooooooooo. Got big home games against the Magic tonight, and then the Heat.

Somebody on this team is going to make the All-Star team. I want to know who. Even though he's actually having one of his worst years statistically, it's probably going to go to Iguodala just off name value alone. I wish Jrue or even Lou would make it, I would be HYPE.
 
Magic tonight, bulls wed, and heat friday. Wells Fargo Center is actually gonna be packed this week with all these stars in town. 5 rows behind visitors bench 
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gonna be a tough stretch ahead for the Sixers; I am still not fully sold because we haven't played anyone but at least we have dominated those games which is why I am optimistic we can win 4 of the next 7
 
I got tickets to the Bobcats vs Sixers game in Charlotte on my birthday, February 13.
 
Originally Posted by StillIn729

gonna be a tough stretch ahead for the Sixers; I am still not fully sold because we haven't played anyone but at least we have dominated those games which is why I am optimistic we can win 4 of the next 7

cosign. 
they are 2-4 against winning teams. lets see if they are legit with the next stretch of games.
 
Originally Posted by PhilBalla09

StillIn729 wrote: 
gonna be a tough stretch ahead for the Sixers; I am still not fully sold because we haven't played anyone but at least we have dominated those games which is why I am optimistic we can win 4 of the next 7

cosign. 
they are 2-4 against winning teams. lets see if they are legit with the next stretch of games.

True, but when you look at the fashion of their wins (and losses).  You will realize how they dominated the teams they were 'supposed' to beat and how close the losses were. That being said, this stretch will give us an idea of how good the sixers really are.
I am looking forward to tonight.
 
New ownership is doing great so far. Tickets are going for dirt cheap to encourage everyone to get excited about the Sixers again. 4th in the east? Let's gooooo
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I'll be going to see them against the Bulls over Spring Break
 
Another quality win for the sixers.
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 @ Black Thought being in the game tonight.
 
The home crowds are great this season now that we're good lol. I remember watching Philly - Den game and was shocked at the packed house
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Anyone think the rumors of us looking to trade for STAT is true?
 
Nah I think there's no way we trade for Amare, but we did look into it to see what they would want. But if it was for Elton Brand and somebody like Nocioni? I'm down. Brand isn't exactly the best defensive player in the world either at this stage of his career. I'd just be scared to disrupt the chemistry that this team has built.
 
ill be in section 120 right behind the fan zone 
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, on friday im right behind the heat bench, im thinking of making a sign, any ideas?
 
Originally Posted by Buc Em

Nah I think there's no way we trade for Amare, but we did look into it to see what they would want. But if it was for Elton Brand and somebody like Nocioni? I'm down. Brand isn't exactly the best defensive player in the world either at this stage of his career. I'd just be scared to disrupt the chemistry that this team has built.

This. One thing that is special about this team is that they all left their egos at the door for the betterment of the team. It would be hard for someone like Amare to do that. I mean he went to NY for the $$$ and to be his own man (without Nash). I would prefer to have someone who has a team first mentality and plays defence Amare is neither.
When is Spencer Haws back on the court?
 
I wouldn't really say ALL that about Amare though. He really is a team-first guy and has always had a good attitude. He went to New York when everyone else was scared to. Plus he's capable of playing minutes at the 5 when we really wanna push the pace. I haven't seen that many of the games this season cause I don't have League Pass, but has Brand been playing real good D? I mean we've been maybe the best defensive unit in basketball this year, but I didn't think he was all that good of a defender for all the times I've seen him play since he's became a Sixer. Also, the reason I heard that the Sixers are NOT interested in Amare is because he can no longer fully insure his surgically repaired left knee. So I don't think it will happen anyway.

I wonder what it would take to get Dwight Howard? Would you do it if it was something like Lou, Thad, Turner, Vucevic and probably a 1st rounder or two for Dwight, Hedo's contract, Duhon and possibly Reddick?

Jrue/Duhon
Meeks/Reddick
Iguodala/Hedo/Nocioni
Brand/Battie/Allen
Dwight/Hawes
 
Well, it isn't going to happen so it doesn't matter.
About the Dwight trade, I actually thought of the same scenario, I am pretty sure we are going to be a team with one of the highest payrolls in the league 
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. I find it surprising why no player mentions coming to the sixers to win. We have one of the (if not the) deepest bench in the league. I mean our top scorer is the sixth man.
 
haven't been in this thread

another solid win tonight, these wins against good teams are the ones i care about...who cares if we beat the Wizards, we're supposed to. I keep underestimating this defense, I don't know how we're doing this without Hawes. I didn't catch the Orlando game, but it seems like we kept Howard in check. Yeah, i know things at Orlando are a bit iffy, but still. Then tonight with Rose.

If we can get a win against Miami on friday and then win at Atlanta...i'd go nuts.
edit: bout the trade, don't trade anybody. We're good with Hawes, etc.
 
defense is very good, I enjoy this team for what it is and you never know what can happen
 
I think Collins deserves the coach of the year as far as this season has gone. Very solid win tonight.
 
^ I'd smash; I've seen her at bars and she is tall as hell
my buddy tried hard as hell to get in those panties a couple years ago
 
Meredith could def get it, I just love the way we're playing D. Elton and Iggy have been our defensive rocks this season, and the scary thing is that our squad is still very young. I'd say we're just continuing our momentum from last season
 
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