Tobias Harris played his best game of the young season, embracing the hostility from his former home crowd in his return to Philadelphia.
Of course there were boos in Tobias Harris’ return to Philadelphia. Of course the ex-Sixer expected them.
What was different Wednesday night was the manner in which the veteran forward responded to them. At one point Harris, now a Detroit Piston for the second time in his 14-year career, cupped his hand to his ear as if to say, “Bring it on.”
And, well, the fans did. But he did, too.
Harris collected 18 points and 14 rebounds in his homecoming, helping the Pistons beat the Sixers 105-95. It was Detroit’s first victory in five games this season, and Harris’ best game, too; the 32-year-old came in averaging 10 points a game, while shooting 34 percent from the floor and under 18 percent from 3-point range.
But contrary to his last game in the Wells Fargo Center — a Game 6 playoff loss to the Knicks on May 2 in which he went scoreless while attempting just two shots in 29:20 — he was persistent and productive. He was, he said, bound and determined not to let the catcalls get to him.
“When I was here playing, that was something that was hard to play through,” he said. “But tonight I was like, ‘Let me just take a different approach to it and embrace it a little bit.’”
The boos began raining down during introductions, and resumed every time he touched the ball. They were muted only during the first-quarter video tribute the Sixers gave him on the arena’s video screens, but that was only because the team combined that with a tribute to another ex-Sixer, Paul Reed, who is also new to the Pistons.
“I knew that it wasn’t going to be like a tearful moment, I’ll tell you that,” Harris said with a laugh. “I mean, I knew that coming in. This is a crowd that, they boo their own team. That’s just kind of like how it is.”
Like Harris, Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff knew what was coming.
“Any time you come back, there are emotions that are always part of it,” he said, adding that that was doubly true on this occasion, given the fans’ reaction to Harris.
He missed five of his seven shots while scoring four points in the first half. But as Bickerstaff said, “He just kept figuring it out.”
Harris scored seven points in the third quarter, seven more in the fourth. In all he dropped in six of his 11 second-half shots to finish 8-for-18 from the floor. He also grabbed half of his rebounds after the break.
“I thought tonight I just did a good job of staying with it all night, not letting it get to me — just really embracing my team and these guys,” he said. “And I thought my team really did a good job of keeping me on track, of just understanding, ‘Hey, we need you, don’t worry about that.’ I think it’s funny because for a lot of guys, they were looking at me, like, ‘Yo, you good?’ And I’m like, ‘I’ve been through this for a minute now, so, like, I already know what it is.’ But it was an interesting experience.”
At shootaround earlier in the day, he told reporters that he feels he underwent “tremendous growth” during his five-plus years in Philadelphia, that it stood in stark contrast to the way he had approached things while playing AAU ball as a young man.
Back then, he said, “If something didn’t work, I would jump to the next team, things of that nature — find a way to move out.”
It was different with the Sixers, his fifth NBA team.
“It was the first thing in my life that I saw through,” he said.
Never mind that he never developed into the complementary piece many hoped he would be. Never mind that he often came up small in big moments. In his mind he deserves some credit for, as he put it, “weathering the storm and finding ways to come through and out of it in some type of fashion, and really battle through it. It was an experience I wouldn’t change.”
And for the record, he did acknowledge his shortcomings.
“Obviously, it didn’t work out the way that I personally wanted it to work out,” he said, “or that the organization wanted it to work out, because we didn’t reach our goal of a championship. But the experiences and lessons along the way are ones I would never change for anything.”
It was, he would add after the game, “definitely an emotional day,” in no small part because he saw so many familiar faces — “people in the arena, people in the building, people that you see on a day-to-day basis, that you’ve seen for five and a half years and you built a rapport with.”
“Overall,” he added, “it was a fun, fun game to be a part of. And I thought as a whole group we just embraced it.”
Nobody more than him, of course.