PHILADELPHIA — What now?
The question had been swirling for weeks, two little words bubbling beneath the red-white-and-blue crust of the Sixers’ latest strategic pivot. They did what they could to make you ignore it, to fool yourself into thinking that the best was yet to come. But it was always there, and with 1:08 left in a do-or-die Game 6, it exploded through the surface. The starters checked out, the subs checked in, and the stands began to empty.
For the several thousand fans still ringing the court once the final horn rang, not to mention the hundreds of thousands more that have followed this franchise’s increasingly desperate attempts to turn a good team into a great one, the only thing left to do was stare and wonder.
