Philadelphia 76ers in Cleveland tickets

The Philadelphia 76ers own one of the most complete origin stories in the NBA. The franchise launched in 1946 as the Syracuse Nationals, gave the league the 24-second shot clock for the 1954-55 season through owner Danny Biasone and general manager Leo Ferris, and won the 1955 championship in that first shot-clock season. When the team moved to Philadelphia in 1963, a naming contest produced 76ers, honoring the Declaration of Independence signed in the city in 1776. The shortened Sixers caught on immediately and has remained official shorthand for six decades.

The franchise story swings between glory and grit like few others. Wilt Chamberlain, a Philadelphia high school legend at Overbrook, arrived in the 1964-65 season and led the 1966-67 Sixers to a 68-13 record and the championship, a team later voted the best in league history at the NBA's 35th anniversary. The pendulum swung hard the other way with an NBA-record 73 losses in 1972-73, before Julius Erving arrived in 1976 and restored the standard. He and Moses Malone won it all in 1983, with Malone famously predicting fo' fo' fo' and the team delivering a 12-1 playoff run. Allen Iverson won MVP in 2001 and carried the Sixers to the Finals, and Joel Embiid added an MVP in 2023.

The modern era was built by The Process, the rebuild general manager Sam Hinkie began in 2013 that traded veterans for draft picks and delivered Joel Embiid third overall in 2014. Embiid grew into that MVP and led the Sixers back to regular playoff contention, with a division title in 2021 and a scoring title in 2021-22 along the way. Sixers home games unfold at Xfinity Mobile Arena in the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, where ten retired numbers hang in the rafters and the calendar's biggest dates are the visits from the rival Celtics and Raptors.