Tyrese Maxey, Sixers discuss learning from 1983 championship team

Tyrese Maxey and the Philadelphia 76ers discuss learning from the 1983 championship team for their own title run.

PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers received a special visit on Monday when the 1983 championship team was honored. Sixers legends Julius Erving, Bobby Jones and others were in attendance as the Sixers took on the Chicago Bulls on Monday.

Their presence allowed the current Sixers to pick their brain and learn what it takes to be a champion in this league. It’s extremely tough to overcome the challenges and the talent across this league to hold up the Larry O’Brien trophy, and the 1983 champions let the current team know about it.

“I mean talking to all of them was actually pretty cool,” said Tyrese Maxey. “Just getting the knowledge and I think coach Doc (Rivers) had them kind of go around and talk about the roles on the team. Some of them had such very small roles, but they were also huge roles because they were able to go out there and cheer on the teammates and be happy about everybody’s success and the team’s success.”

Maxey is a young player who is a major contributor to this team. Only in his third season, he is expected to be the third scorer to help them overcome teams such as the Boston Celtics and the Milwaukee Bucks. Any knowledge that he can soak up from those players is going to be a huge benefit for him.

The challenge for this group is to end the drought and bring home an NBA championship. It will not be easy by any means, but if it were easy, everybody would do it.

“It’s not easy to win in this league,” added Joel Embiid. “Like I said, you gotta take it one game at a time. You know, when we are at our best, we got a chance against everybody. Even when we’re not, we still got to find ways like tonight (Monday), we weren’t good enough. So we just got to find ways to be at our best.”

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ESPN’s Jay Bilas ranks 1983 champion Sixers as 4th greatest team ever

The 1983 NBA champion Philadelphia 76ers are ranked as the fourth-best team in NBA history.

In honor of “The Last Dance” which is a documentary highlighting the amazing career of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, there is a debate going on where everybody is ranking the top five teams in this history of the game.

The 1995-96 Bulls went on to win 72 games and it was also the beginning of another 3-peat. Obviously, a lot of people are going to have that Chicago team at the top of their list, but what about the other four spots?

ESPN basketball analyst Jay Bilas made his list and he had the 1983 champion Philadelphia 76ers ranked as the fourth-best team on his list. They were up there with the Boston Celtics teams led by Larry Bird plus two different Los Angeles Lakers teams. ESPN’s graphic says the 1992-93 Sixers so forgive their typo.

The 1983 Sixers were led by some of the best players in franchise history in Julius Erving, Moses Malone, and Andrew Toney. The team was so dominant that they only lost one game throughout the playoffs on their way to an NBA title. They swept the New York Knicks, then beat the Milwaukee Bucks in five games, and then swept the Lakers in the Finals. [lawrence-related id=31160,31155,31138]

March Madness: 1983 team voted as best in Philadelphia 76ers history

The final fan votes have been counted and the 1983 Philadelphia 76ers are voted as the best in franchise history.

The final fan votes have been tallied and the last championship team in history came out on top as the best team ever assembled in the history of the Philadelphia 76ers.

We set up a March Madness type of bracket with the top 12 teams in franchise history and had you, the fans, vote on each matchup to find a winner in each one. To see the final results for the previous matchups:

Voting results: Round 1 Round 2  Round 3 Championship Round

The 1982-83 Sixers team defeated the 2000-01 Sixers by a wide margin of 95.45% to 4.55% of the vote. On paper heading into this matchup, it appeared that the 1983 team had the edge and that the 2001 Sixers probably should not have received more votes than the 1967 title-winning Sixers.

The 1983 team was led by one of the most electrifying players in the game in Julius “Dr. J” Erving and he was flanked by a dominant big man in Moses Malone who went on to win Finals MVP of the Finals where the Sixers swept the Los Angeles Lakers. Malone averaged a gaudy 25.8 points and 18.0 rebounds in the series against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The Sixers were more than just Erving and Malone too. Andrew Toney was a huge part of that team and he averaged 22 points in the Finals providing terrific play on both ends of the floor. The team also received big contributions from Maurice Cheeks and Bobby Jones as well. They were a complete team.

The 2001 team was special and they were led by the electric Allen Iverson and the inside play of Dikembe Mutombo, but they were not better than the ’83 champions. [lawrence-related id=28994,28985,28977]