Have you been watching the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers this season?

And if you have – or even if you haven’t – did you watch them last Saturday night?

If you did – pertaining to the latter question – you saw them come out a-blazing in the second half and turn a tight battle into an absolute rout as they defeated the Miami Heat 130-103 in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference opening-round series.

To some, that may have been a surprise – that is, not that the 76ers won, but that they did so in such convincing fashion – but to most people, it wasn’t – not at all, really. The longer this season has gone on, the better the 76ers have gotten. That was their 17th consecutive victory. Game 2 is set for Monday night at. It starts at 8 o’clock, in case you’re interested, and I imagine that many of you reading this, are, because you’re fans of several different sports, not just football.

I say this because it relates to the Browns – or at least I truly believe it does. In a lot of ways, Philadelphia may be the NBA’s version of Cleveland.

The 76ers finished the regular season with a 52-30 record (.634), good enough to earn the conference’s No. 3 playoff seed, just ahead of the fourth-seeded Cavaliers (50-32). But it wasn’t always like this for the 76ets. They’ve taken a brutal, painful journey to get here.

This is the 76ers’ first playoff berth in six seasons. Last year, they were 28-54 (.341), and in the three seasons before that, they were even worse, finishing 10-72 (.122), 18-64 (.220) and (19-63). Add up the wins from that three-year period and they total 47, which is five less than they got in the current season. That goes to show just how much the 76ers have improved.

The 76ers made the playoffs four out of five years from 2007-08 to 2011-12, but it was just an exercise in futility because they were a .500 team and came in as the sixth through seed. That is, they had no chance to make a run, and they didn’t.

Before this season, the 76ers hadn’t really been relevant – that is, a serious title contender – since 2000-01, when, with Allen Iverson leading the way, they went 56-26 and advanced all the way to the NBA Finals, where they 4-1 to the Los Angeles Lakers.

We’ll continue this – complete this — in my next post.