The (in)famous Defector Philly Bureau has been oddly silent on this bit of newsy detritus, which is not normally like it. Maybe it was just the giddiness of watching the Phillies beat the Colorado Rockies and extend their run of watchable baseball to two full weeks, or maybe it was the festivities of Mother's Day ("Hi mom, here's some flowers, some candy and some brunch. We'll try to be home for dinner"), or maybe Eternal Comrade McQuade wasn't around to revel loudly in the quirky details.
Whatever the reason, the fact remains: Playoff season is over for the Children of Billy Penn, already the only town to ever lose two championships on the same day. This time it ended with near-synchronous thuds in the very same building.
Saturday, the Flyers lost to Carolina in overtime, 3-2, to be eliminated in four straight games. Sunday, the 76ers got jackhammered by New York, 144-114, in a Game 4 that wasn't remotely that close; they too were swept. A six seed and seven seed overachieved right up to the point where they ran out of achievements, and in 24 hours Philadelphia's entire spring was wiped out.
Yes, the Phillies have another 121 games to play, and the Union still have two-thirds of their season to overcome a hideous start, and let's not forget the vital NFL schedule release this Thursday that reminds the Delaware Valley that Nick Sirianni still has his job. But the Flyers and Sixers both inspired and expired in a shared orbit, a merger of civic deflations last seen in 1981 in Chicago when the Blackhawks and Bulls got bumrushed out of the playoffs on successive nights in Chicago Stadium. That's a lot of fistfights with strangers on the way to the parking lot for one weekend.
The Flyers comported themselves slightly better against the Canes, the most dominant team of these Stanley Cup playoffs in that they are the first team to sweep their first two best-of-seven series since the 1969 St. Louis Blues. Philadelphia scrambled to make the postseason at all but won 14 of its last 18 regular-season games and muscled Pittsburgh out of the first round, making its fans believe that they were one of those gifted outworlders who could shock the world.
They weren’t, and they couldn't. Despite taking the Canes to overtime twice and having the hotter goalie in Dan Vladar, the Flyers got shown the difference between competing and contending. They made the postseason for the first time in six years and their future seems appealing, but this was the skillet across the mush that reminded them how much further they have to go.
The Sixers on the other hand entered the New York series feeling all kinds of mighty after whipping Boston in seven games, especially after falling behind 3-1. They had all-day vibes coming up against the perpetually cursed Knicks only to learn that these Knicks have actually joined the 21st century offensively and are even taking on hints of the offensive style Mike Brown learned in Golden State. The results were ruthless: bookended routs (39-point and 30-point margins) and slow strangulations in between, with both home and away games sounding like MSG for all the Knicks fans in attendance. Beating the Celtics was a genuine surprise; getting run by the Knicks was, well, not. Joel Embiid reminded people how important and how irritating he is, and the rest of the Sixers are equally long on promise and short on delivery; the last time they escaped the second round was 2001. Trust the process of elimination.
When put together with the Flyers' bounce the night before, it feels like two whole and entire seasons wasted. It wasn't, but getting swept has a dismissive finality to it. This was a bad weekend for Philadelphia on balance, and it will take a lot more of the Phillies no longer pretending to be the Mets before they forget it.
