A raucous home crowd inspired MVP Allen Iverson and the Sixers in ‘01. Joel Embiid needs that in Game 3.

There are certain games and moments for any sports franchise that maintain a warm glow in memory. The 76ers don’t have many of them. Not in the last 40 years. Despite all their 50-win seasons recently, the Sixers still haven’t advanced past the second round of the playoffs since 2001 and haven’t won a championship since 1983. For every time it appeared and felt as if they were poised to make a deep postseason run, there has been something or someone — a Kawhi Leonard four-bouncer at the buzzer, a dunk that Ben Simmons was too timid to throw down, Jimmy Butler — stopping them.

So when there’s a parallel between one of those rare warm memories and the circumstances of the present, it’s natural to draw it. And here, we have one. Here, we have the Sixers tied in the Eastern Conference semifinals, returning for a home game that could tilt the series, with their fans awaiting their first chance to fete the NBA’s newest Most Valuable Player. This should all sound familiar. This is familiar. This is Joel Embiid now. This was Allen Iverson in May 2001, before Game 5 against the Toronto Raptors.

This is also relevant. It might not seem like it would be, given the 22 years that have passed since that night at the First Union Center (now the Wells Fargo Center). Iverson accepted the MVP trophy from then-commissioner David Stern, delivered a brief speech that sent a sellout crowd into euphoria — “Every time I come in this gym,” he said, “I hear my favorite song: your voices” — and torched the Raptors for eight three-pointers and 52 points in a 121-88 rout.

“In many ways, it was the pivotal game of that series,” said Marc Zumoff, who called Game 5 for Comcast SportsNet, and the conditions are set up for Friday’s Game 3 to have a similar effect on this Sixers-Celtics matchup. It will have to, if the Sixers are going to have any realistic shot of beating Boston.

» READ MORE: The Sixers struggled to find their rhythm in Joel Embiid’s return. After a Game 2 stinker, they need to find it fast.

Embiid’s knee sprain left him slowed throughout the Celtics’ 121-87 romp Wednesday in Game 2 and promises to hamper him throughout the series. James Harden won’t have another nine-day layoff before any other games, so it’s hard to believe he’ll come close to duplicating his 45-point Game 1 masterpiece. The odds are still against the Sixers here, and they’ll take any advantage they can get, especially a fevered home crowd eager to celebrate an MVP. It worked for Iverson and that Sixers team. It has to work for Embiid and this one.

“You could feel the building shaking,” Zumoff, who retired in 2021 after 27 years as the Sixers’ play-by-play voice, said in a phone interview. “The team was jacked. The fans were jacked. By the end of the first quarter, the game was over.”

That Sixers team was not this one. Of course it wasn’t. That team was sui generis — one incandescent scorer, Iverson, surrounded by role players who were willing to do anything and everything else to win: rebound, defend, be content with shooting the ball themselves only when it was a last resort. That roster didn’t have the talent and star power that these Sixers have, with Embiid and Harden and Tyrese Maxey and Tobias Harris. But then, not a single member of that ‘01 club — Iverson, Dikembe Mutombo, Aaron McKie, George Lynch, none of them — would have abided Maxey’s repeated reluctance to hit the floor for a loose ball in Game 2.

Embiid alone, though, has forged a comparable connection here to the one Iverson had. You wouldn’t think they were so alike to look at them: Embiid 7 feet tall and powerful, Iverson 6 feet tall and spindly. But look a level deeper, and you’ll find an openness in each of their personalities and an underdog element to each of their stories that Sixers fans cherish.

» READ MORE: 25 years ago, Iverson was booed in Cleveland. He didn't let it change him.

Iverson’s mother had to beg Georgetown’s John Thompson to pull her son out of poverty, to give him a shot at stardom, and for all his flaws and mistakes, he honored that opportunity by, in his trademark phrase, playing every game like it was his last. Embiid grew up a world away in Cameroon, destined for an anonymous life, then had to prove, after all those injuries prevented him from playing a single game during his first two years with the Sixers, that he could stay healthy enough to fulfill his potential.

“They’re two unlikely heroes,” Zumoff said, “in that Iverson grew up in squalor. He was in prison for a time. There was every reason to think his life was in danger, let alone blossoming into a Hall of Fame career. All these things had to happen for Allen to become an unlikely hero. Joel was in an environment where the NBA was not as big a deal as it was to us. He takes up the game by happenstance and doesn’t do it until he’s 15. He had one decent year at Kansas, and two years in here, people are asking if he’s ever going to play.

» READ MORE: Consider Game 2 a scheduled loss for the Sixers and a rehab session for Joel Embiid. Game 3 will be different.

“They both love playing to the crowd. They feed off Joel, and they fed off Allen, and vice versa — Allen putting his hand to his head and cupping his ear, Joel with those big arms waving and urging the crowd. In Philly, that’s what we love about our superstar athletes. We love the ones who connect with us and consider us to be an asset to them.”

They get a shot to show that love again Friday night. Their MVP and his team have never needed it more.