‘New year, same me’: Georges Niang’s Inquirer diary takes readers inside streaking Sixers

Welcome to the latest edition of Georges Niang’s 2022-23 Sixers diary. Throughout the season, the reserve forward will exclusively share first-person insights about his on-court and off-court life as part of one of the NBA’s more intriguing teams.

In this entry, Niang describes what it feels like to play in — and quickly move on from — an overtime thriller such as the Sixers’ Wednesday win over the Indiana Pacers, next steps for his team that has won 11 of its past 13 games, the backstory of his “GO WEEKEND GO” Friday social-media videos and why he does not make New Year’s resolutions.

Past Entries: Dec. 8: Sixers skid | Oct. 26: 1-4 start | Nov. 18: Embiid’s night

Where did the time go? I had a moment on the bench Wednesday night when I was like, “Holy [expletive], this is my second year in Philly, and we’re almost halfway through. This is kind of crazy.” I think the most unique thing about Philadelphia is, when you’re here for a period of time, you’re kind of engrained in the culture. The fans feel like they’re one of you, and you feel like you’re one of them. I think that’s the coolest part. You’re in a city that has history, and they actually care. They care if you’re winning or losing. They care if you’re competitive.

I wake up and work as hard as I do because I love what I do, but also to do it for a city that wants a championship. For kids that grew up being Sixers fans. For the older generation that’s had season tickets for 20 or 30 years. That adds extra motivation to kind of be better when you feel that energy in the arena. I think it’s super cool.

We didn’t have Jo against the Pacers, and we went out there and impacted the game the way we knew we had to. Moving the ball. Slowing them down in transition and exploiting mismatches. Mixing up defenses, like playing zone. Playing with a traditional center or playing with Tuck at center. That’s kind of how we had to figure out a way to make it happen. Obviously, I think the thing for us is continuing to stop making compounding mistakes in the fourth quarter that lead to the runs that opponents have. But I think, overall, you’re happy, because when you’re down four with 57 seconds to go, Tyrese Maxey makes an incredible play. Then, James makes a stop and we’re able to break out and tie the game and then get a stop at the end of regulation to send it to overtime.

Obviously, you don’t apologize for winning games, even if they’re ugly. That was a huge win for us. I think that was a step in the right direction, but there are some little things that we need to continue to clean up. That’s kind of the theme of this year: progressively growing. That’s kind of what the regular season is for.

» READ MORE: Sixers’ Joel Embiid will miss his second straight game with a sore left foot

I’m not sure there’s any one specific moment from Wednesday that stands out, because you’ve got to remember, all those things happen so fast. Your emotions are, “Oh, damn, we really just lost this game. We’re down four,” to, “Oh, [expletive], now we have a chance,” to, “OK, let’s get a stop,” to, “OK, now we’re in overtime and it’s a whole new game.” It’s just an influx of all those emotions. You have to realize, as a player, we’re human, too. Those five minutes that may have taken 20 minutes in real time, that felt like a minute to me. People don’t really understand that. You’re just so lost in the flow of the game and what’s going on that you’re just like, “Whoa, what just happened?” You kind of sit back and rewatch film and you see, “Oh, damn, if we did this or if we did that, maybe we could have had a different outcome.” At the end of the day, with where we were with missing our superstar in Jo and getting Tyrese implemented back into the starting lineup, I thought that was a huge victory for us.

You play so many games so frequently that if you dwell on something good that has happened, you end up tripping and falling the next game. And if you dwell on something bad that’s happened, you continue to keep that bad energy and you let that one loss turn into more. The thing that I learned in this league is to have amnesia. Just forget what just happened and move onto the next thing. You want to be taking steps forward. You don’t want to be focusing on the past. You want to improve a little bit every time you step onto the court, and I think we’ve done that. We struggled early. Yes, we had injuries. But I think the growth factor of us being able to just slowly progress and get better each time we get on the court is something that led us to that eight-game winning streak — and winning close that sometimes we struggled to win last year, especially when we were missing guys.

» READ MORE: Eight New Year’s resolutions for the Sixers to live by in 2022-23

Christmas was awesome. The fact that we could play in the first game on Christmas, win and spend time with our families so close to home, I think that was really cool. And then being on the road, the team is your family. To share those moments and to see everyone’s close family together, those are cool settings where you get to know who people really are. Obviously, the clock striking midnight on New Year’s Eve while we’re in the air flying home from OKC wasn’t ideal, but you get to share those moments together and those are things people don’t forget.

I don’t know if there’s a specific word that I would use to describe us as a team, but we have the commonality that we want to win and we all enjoy being around each other. Sometimes, that’s a rarity in professional sports — because sometimes, people are just work acquaintances. We actually all want to win, and we’re all at points in our career where we’re taken care of financially and can say, “Let’s win a championship. Let’s put that at the forefront of our mind.”

I’ve been a guy that puts his hard hat on during the week, but when it comes down to the weekend, I like to enjoy myself. I like to kind of live by the motto “Work hard, play hard.” Ever since I was a kid, knowing that I was going to school on Friday and then I was done for the weekend, Friday was always my favorite day. The “GO WEEKEND GO” videos kind of started for all the normal people — and I feel like I’m pretty normal — because the grind of the week gets hard, and when Friday comes, you kind of want to let your hair down and celebrate the weekend. Why not have a video to start it off?

I work with a media company called TorchPro. It kind of took off, and now we’re using some graphics. We’re using some “Rocky.” We’re using some “Jurassic Park.” Even some “Elf.” We’re kind of keeping it light, keeping it funny. That’s just my personality coming out. I’m just happy that this city and these fans let me be who I am and kind of embrace me for that.

New year, same me. I don’t like doing that New Year’s resolution stuff. I’m going to continue to be the same person, and I think if you live by the mindset of continuously trying to grow and be a better person every day, you don’t need to reset. Why wait until the new year? Just do it now. Put that on a t-shirt, like “bang, bang Niang.”

— Georges Niang, as told to Gina Mizell