Shane Victorino wants to hit the bathroom one more time. From the looks of it, it might just be to splash some cold water on his face.
“I’m shaking!” a wide-eyed Victorino says to no one in particular. “You don’t want to embarrass yourself.”
The World Series-winning former Phillie is inside a handsome room called the Patriot Partner Lounge, where VIP guests of the 76ers mingle and the 1983 Larry O’Brien Trophy sits encased as the centerpiece. Victorino, who still looks ready to take the diamond, is minutes away from stepping into an unaccustomed spotlight in a familiar city: center court of the Wells Fargo Center.
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It’s Game 4 of Sixers-Raptors, and he, along with former manager Charlie Manuel — donning a brand-new Sixers cap, still happily recalling the warm feelings associated with helping to deliver a championship — is here to ring the bell.
Christian Crosby, the team’s in-arena host, asks Manuel about Philadelphia fans. “Greatest fans in the world. They can be aggressive toward you, as far as hollerin’ at you and things like that,” he says. “But they actually played a huge role (in the Phillies’ title in 2008). We probably will never realize the role they played.”
With Victorino back, a Sixers official tells the guests of honor it’s time. “Are we ready?”
Tonight, as the Sixers stare down elimination and another second-round exit, it’s safe to say they’ll need all the juice they can get. For many in the building, that begins in earnest with the bell.
Though the bell-ringing ceremony has only been around since the 2013-14 season, the home-game ritual has quickly and boldly cemented its place in Process lore and the city at large. A hyped-up intersection of celebrity, sports and Philadelphia culture, the bell-ringing involves a 200-pound cast-iron bell, well-known figures swinging a rubber mallet, 3D court projection video and more than 20,000 cheering fans losing their collective mind. Oh, and pyro. Lots of pyro. It’s a spectacle tailor-made for a live sporting event in 2019.
“Right before the game begins, emotions are running high and hope is high,” Phillies manager Gabe Kapler, and two-time ringer, told The Athletic last week. “It’s an incredible amount of adrenaline running through your body.”
This all began with the organization yearning for its own tradition, like “the Chicago Cubs with their throwing back the home-run balls or even the Baltimore Orioles, how their fans chant ‘O!’ during the national anthem,” says 76ers team president Chris Heck. Coming off a 34-win 2012-13 season that would be Doug Collins’ last as head coach, the 76ers were a franchise that needed a boost, on and off the court.
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“We were not, shall we say, an aspirational brand at that time,” Heck says.
Brainstorming eventually led to the bell, an obvious symbol of the city, and the centerpiece the 76ers bought from a used bell seller in the Midwest. They envisioned it as a good-luck charm the team would touch on the way to the court. “We wanted it to be a little like Notre Dame or Clemson football,” Heck says.
The only problem: Players lacked the front office’s excitement.
“Lo and behold, we had some veterans that just thought it was goofy and they said no,” Heck says with a laugh. “So they ran by the bell and no one touched it.”
So began the ceremony’s simpler beginnings. The bell was moved from near the team’s tunnel to center court early in the 2013 season. It became an opportunity to honor military members in attendance. Even corporate sponsors got their turn to swing the half-pound mallet.
“It was fun,” Heck says. “It just wasn’t something people were on the edge of their seats waiting to find out who it was.”
That indifference didn’t last long. The Sixers began to tap their own, like Julius Erving, Billy Cunningham and Allen Iverson, with electric results. Other local sports stars — Jimmy Rollins, Danny García, Ryan Howard, Malcolm Jenkins — joined the fun, too. The Sixers could feel the ceremony taking hold. Fans called into local radio stations to guess the night’s ringer. The same questions were popping up on the team’s social media accounts.
🔔 A masked Joel Embiid rings the bell in Philly! 🔔#PhilaUnite @ESPNNBA pic.twitter.com/eiwBM7EmQd
— NBA (@NBA) April 15, 2018
April 14, 2018 signaled the most significant turning point, according to Heck.
Recovering from an orbital bone fracture, Joel Embiid sat out that night’s Game 1 of the first-round series against the Heat. His presence, though, was felt throughout the building, as Embiid — in full ham mode — struck the bell to cheers and the sounds of Future’s “Mask Off.” (He wore the now-famous “Phantom of the Process” mask at the suggestion of Todd Wright, the team’s strength and conditioning coach.)
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As it tends to go with anything Embiid does, the bell-ringing scene appeared all over “SportsCenter” and on other national outlets. “Philly knew about it and knew how cool it was, but the world found out about it last year,” Heck says.
The Sixers, used to making the calls to see about a celebrity’s availability, were suddenly being approached by notable stars — A-list and those further down the alphabet — ready to offer their services to swing.
Lil Dicky prepares to ring the bell in October 2017. (Bill Streicher / USA TODAY)
Now, since the start of the 2017 season, the bell-ringing alumni include: Philadelphia’s most famous comedian (Kevin Hart), a Super Bowl-winning MVP (Nick Foles), Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), a two-time Olympic gold medalist (Carli Lloyd), an Oscar-nominated film director/season-ticket holder (M. Night Shyamalan) and the leader of the Wu-Tang Clan (RZA) — just to name a few. Many of the ringers are life-long fans.
“Virtually nothing means more to me than the Sixers. Like, in life,” Lil Dicky, the Montgomery County-raised rapper and three-time bell-ringer, wrote in an email. “To do the basketball equivalent of the first pitch, especially during a playoff game — those are the most ‘I’ve made it’ moments for me.”
The star power has indeed climbed, helping stoke the same question before each game: Who’s ringing it tonight?
“There’s a little star, it’s on the bell. You want to try it to hit that star, and you can honestly hit it as hard as possible,” Maia Ben-Shoshan, manager of fan solutions for the team, explains to Shane Victorino and Charlie Manuel before Game 4 last Sunday. “It won’t break no matter how hard you hit it. We just want to make it look believable.”
Kingston, Victorino’s 8-year-old son who’s rocking a Ben Simmons jersey, asks to hit it, too. (Maybe next time.) Fans settling into their seats still don’t know who’s coming out.
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After less than three minutes of instruction, Victorino and Manuel are whisked through a tunnel leading to the court, where the lights are already down and the Raptors are stretching, doing their best to ignore the pageantry. Kyle Lowry holds a plank. Feet away, Manuel and Victorino are greeted by Franklin as ESPN and local cameras get close to record.
Everything goes as planned: Manuel delivers the opening strike and Victorino — Kingston wrapped around his left arm — finishes it off with his own two hits. With each blow, the floor appears to crack until the final audible smack collapses the (video) court and the Sixers player introductions begin. Hours of planning pay off for less than 35 seconds.
Growing up in the small Hawaiian town of Wailuku, Victorino says he didn’t know how strong the bond could be between a city, its sports teams and their fans until he became a Phillie. The bell-ringing ceremony serves as a heartening reminder for the retired ballplayer.
“Walking out there, feeling that environment — it’s almost like, I call it that ‘sixth sense’ of having that connection with the fans. You understand the feeling,” Victorino told The Athletic at halftime. “It almost trickles back to what you felt as a player.”
Victorino is an example of why the bell-ringing ritual resonates beyond a single basketball game. In Philadelphia, once you become a legend — or even better, a champion — you’re never forgotten.
“I haven’t played here since 2012,” Victorino says. “To still be loved and have that opportunity, it only makes me smile.”
Objectively and frankly, the introduction is badass. It’s an incredibly effective way to achieve the goal of any loud, flashy pregame presentation: Hype the crowd up. Sixers officials say they’ve answered questions from other NBA teams about how to create a similar tradition seemingly overnight.
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“We like to call this our five-year overnight success,” says Katie O’Reilly, the team’s chief marketing officer. They expect copycats.
But talk to any of the people behind the scenes, and it’s obvious the success of the ceremony carries a deeper meaning for the 76ers employees fans don’t see under the lights. It reflects the organization’s own behind-the-scenes growth that has mirrored the team’s rapidly improving on-court performance (Game 5 blowouts notwithstanding). Members of the organization like O’Reilly, Heck, CEO Scott O’Neil and others began working at the Sixers around the time of Brett Brown’s hire in 2013, so there’s a sense of dual Processes at work throughout the building.
From left: Carson Wentz, Rhys Hoskins and James van Riemsdyk ring the bell at Game 3 of the Sixers-Raptors series. (Courtesy of Philadelphia 76ers)
And the blossoming success of the bell-ringing ceremony feels emblematic of the organization as a whole. It’s a ritual that appears here to stay.
“It’s really in the fabric of our DNA now,” O’Reilly says.
What could register as promotional speak is, in fact, authentic — just ask the head coach. As followers of the Sixers’ Twitter and Instagram accounts are likely aware, Brown, too, has embraced the ceremony by asking his player of the game to ring a mini-bell at the end of the night. Once in a while, the exchange is reciprocated. When Brown won his first playoff series as a head coach or finally got a win over the Warriors, his team returned the favor.
“Ring that bell, coach!” they urged Brown. Each time, the appreciation on Brown’s face indicated that this wasn’t manufactured emotion. Around here, the bell, no matter the size, matters.
When it comes to potential ringers, the Sixers have a bucket-list list. It hangs on Heck’s office window. Naturally, he remains tight-lipped about it — for the most part.
“I’ll give you one,” Heck says after some prodding. “I’m, of course, an ‘Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ fan, as are many other people in the organization. … They have an open invite.” (Perhaps that explains this.)
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Somehow, Will Smith — the Oscar-nominated Philadelphia native and a limited partner of the Sixers — has yet to ring the bell. Chances are, if you’ve thought of someone with a Philadelphia tie for this, the organization has already tried to make it happen. Most often, the issue is getting the celebrity’s location and schedule to align with a home game.
Desron Dorset, vice president of business development, knows this problem all too well. He helps book many of the bell-ringers, and knows how to navigate the hectic coordinating and the unpredictable issues that arise.
Take April 24, 2018, another spring day that became one of the Sixers’ most memorable pregame ceremonies to date. That afternoon, Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill was released from prison. Around the same time, while taking a break from pickup hoops, Dorset checked his phone. Ninety-three text messages, many of which asked the same question: Is Meek ringing the bell?
Meek Mill (left) and Kevin Hart at the Sixers game the same day in 2018 the rapper was released from prison. (Bill Streicher / USA TODAY)
So Dorset called the original ringer, who was already on the way to the arena, to cancel. With less than a four-hour window, Dorset had to procure new clothes (an Embiid jersey over a white Acne Studios turtleneck) and a sit-down in a barber’s chair for Meek, who was arriving straight from the State Correctional Institution in Chester.
“It was a logistical nightmare, but I will say our team here is ready for any and all scenarios,” Dorset says.
For him, it’s about delivering the biggest moment possible, not bruised egos.
“We don’t give false hope,” he says. “When you have that attitude that no one’s bigger than the bell … everyone tends to fall in line.”
For the 76ers, the bell-ringing ceremony has become a part of the organization’s larger “Phila Unite” campaign, which launched last playoff season.
While all teams are looking to strike marketing gold that feels “authentic,” it’s hard to ignore how shrewd of a choice the Sixers made here. The “Unite” goes beyond the team and the city, Heck says. It’s also a message of bringing together the players who hail from different countries. Even the colorful murals that popped up around the city last year — in areas like Fishtown, West Poplar and elsewhere — echo the unifying sentiment through different neighborhoods.
A “Phila Unite” mural outside of Sulimay’s on East Girard Avenue. (Courtesy of Philadelphia 76ers)
Perhaps most visibly, “Phila Unite” also aims to bring together Philadelphia’s sports teams, which explains why Carson Wentz, Rhys Hoskins and James van Riemsdyk shared bell-ringing duties for Game 3 of the Toronto series. As much as it pains the Sixers to admit it, they found inspiration for the approach from the enemy: Boston, a city whose athletes regularly show public support for each other across sports, especially during respective playoff pushes.
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“We hate the Boston Celtics. That is as true as it comes,” Heck says, unprompted and with a laugh. “That being said, the city of Boston … they do some things extraordinarily well with working with each other’s teams.”
It was a compliment Heck couldn’t just let hang in the air. “A tip of the cap to them, but we just do it better,” he says. “And it’s a small hat.”
As Victorino and Manuel proved at Game 4, and the trio of Philly sports stars showed the game before, galvanizing a fan base means reminding everyone exactly why you’re all there: To cheer your team toward a common goal. And right now, no ritual in Philadelphia sports encapsulates that passion and camaraderie like the 76ers’ bell-ringing ceremony.
“You feel in that moment a part of Philadelphia sports and a part of the city and connected with the fans,” Kapler says. “It feels like everybody’s pulling the rope in the same direction at that moment.”
Top photo: Shane Victorino, Kingston Victorino and Charlie Manuel ring the bell before Game 4 of Sixers-Raptors. (Courtesy of Philadelphia 76ers)
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