There is no more powerful natural resource than the energy produced by Philadelphia sports fans when one of their teams are good. That was on display two years ago, when the Eagles won the Super Bowl, and it was evident during Game 3 of the 2019 Eastern Conference Semifinals, when the Sixers beat the Toronto Raptors at Wells Fargo Center to take a 2-1 series lead.
If the 76ers do something special this year, it will invariably draw comparisons to the run that the Eagles went on with Nick Foles under center. These comparisons will also exist because it’s extremely possible that the dog masks that were made famous during that stretch will pop up again.
Sixers fan and very nice guy who I once met at a Modern Baseball concert Shamus Clancy tweeted at the Sixers Twitter account and got clarification that fans will be allowed into the arena on Sunday with dog masks on their heads. We’ll get to why this is a thing in a moment.
@sixers am I allowed to bring a dog mask into the arena on Sunday?
— shamus (@shamus_clancy) May 3, 2019
Yes, please. pic.twitter.com/GHYyF9rql6
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) May 3, 2019
During the run to the Super Bowl, Eagles offensive lineman Lane Johnson and defensive lineman Chris Long wore dog masks to the team’s divisional round game against the Falcons. While Philly was the No. 1 seed and the game was played at Lincoln Financial Field, they were viewed as underdogs due to a season-ending injury to MVP-caliber quarterback Carson Wentz. As the Eagles progressed through the postseason, the masks became more and more prominent. I lived in Pennsylvania at the time and they were sold throughout the commonwealth. If you think that sounds weird, I promise you, as a person who is not an Eagles fan, it was even weirder than you think.
Long explained the reasoning behind throwing the mask on, per NBCSports.com:
“I don’t know if you heard, there was a little narrative this week that the media was pushing that evidently we were like not favored?
“So I (got) this mask. Somebody was like, ‘What’s up with the wolf mask?’ First of all, it’s a German shepherd. And it’s the underdog mask and I wasn’t going to field any questions but I decided I would field them in the dog mask.”
The Sixers, meanwhile, came into this series as underdogs, and while they’re up 2-1 and Game 4 is in their building, the fine folks in Las Vegas have them as 1.5-point underdogs. This leads to a mentality that folks in the city really relish, partly because it lets them put on horrifying dog masks that remind them of when the Eagles won the Super Bowl.
