Philly Tough: Joel Embiid’s heroic game & James Harden’s bounce-back evens series. Now, do it again.

They can win it all.

We’re not talking about the Eastern Conference semifinal. We’re talking NBA title. The ring. The ‘chip. If not this year, then next.

Philadelphia finally has a basketball team worthy of its ethic. A team that plays with heart. A team that plays every play hard. A team that plays without fear of failure.

Allen Iverson’s teams approached this level, but never had the talent. No, it hasn’t been since Moses and Doc and the Boston Strangler ruled the NBA that the City of Brotherly Love boasted such a lovably hateful basketball team. They have it now. For now.

» READ MORE: James Harden’s game-winner lifts Sixers to wild 116-115 overtime win to even series with Boston Celtics

If Joel Embiid demands the ball and rebounds like a maniac, the Sixers can beat anybody. He scored 34 points and collected 13 rebounds and played 46 minutes on a bum knee.

If James Harden attacks the rim, and shoots like the assassin he is, they can beat anybody. Harden forced overtime with a jumper with 16,1 seconds left in regulation, then hit the winning three-pointer with 19 seconds to play in overtime for a 116-115 final that evened the series at 2-2. Harden won Game 1 with 45 points in Embiid’s absence, then scored 42 on Sunday after disappearing for Games 2 and 3.

If Doc Rivers remains as pliable and innovative and versatile and motivational, Sunday’s thrill can lead to the first Sixers parade in 40 years.

This last-minute win as the residue of 52 previous minutes of visceral desire. They blew a 15-point lead in regulation and came back from five points down in overtime, like a team with championship DNA can do.

To wit: With 3 minutes, 29 seconds to play in the third quarter, both Embiid and Harden were on the Wells Fargo Center floor, fighting for a loose ball, and forced a jump ball. They led, but they didn’t care. They trailed the Celtics in the series, but they didn’t care. They didn’t care about their “fit” or their “drip” or the cot damn MVP award. They were playing basketball like grown bleeping men, at last, and the only thing that mattered was that possession and that moment.

That play, and dozens more like them, turned a page for this Sixers team.

“We’ve done that all year — sticking together, fighting through anything,” Embiid said.

Wrong. They’ve done that occasionally all year, but they’ve never done it to this degree on this stage with so much at stake.

“I think so. I know so,” Harden said. “To be there and continue to battle … that’s what playoff basketball is all about. Of course, you don’t want to give up a 15-point lead. It was, like, next play.”

» READ MORE: James Harden shares pregame hug with Michigan State shooting victim John Hao

That’s winning basketball. That’s championship basketball. If the Sixers perform with that level of physicality and with that degree of determination, they can beat any team in the NBA on any night.

Jayson Tatum and the Celtics. Jimmy Butler and the Heat. Steph Curry and Warriors. And, of course, Nikola Jokić and the Nuggets.

Embiid, playing in his third game with a knee sprain that cost him 10 days, ran out of gas. As his minutes crept toward the 40 mark, he started going up softly. Fading away. Not helping on defense. There’s only so much you can ask of a man.

He managed a baseline jumper and two free throws in overtime, and his fourth assist came on Harden’s winner, but you could see the white spots dancing in his vision.

If nothing else, with their first half the Sixers proved Sunday that they have the talent to win. The Celtics might be, in this precise moment, the best team left in the postseason. If Embiid’s healthy and in shape, the Sixers are better. They have to bank on that. They have to believe it.

And now, they have to prove it, like they did Sunday afternoon. Again, Tuesday night in Boston. And again, Thursday night in Philly.

Can they?

“I don’t know,” said P.J. Tucker, the mercenary enforcer the Sixers signed after he pulverized them for Miami last year. “If we take those things and get better … we’ll know in a few days.”

This does not lie at the feet of Doc Rivers, their coach. He implores them to play like grown men, the way he played at Marquette and Atlanta.

“First to the floor usually wins the war. (pause) I’m a poet,” Rivers said before the game. And after?

“This team is tough. It doesn’t guarantee wins. It doesn’t guarantee anything. But we’re not going to go away. That’s what tonight was about.”

It does not lie at the feet of Daryl Morey, the architect, who gauged the depths of their best efforts, combined them, and paid them accordingly.

This lies at the feet of the players, and the players alone.

Embiid had 19 points and 11 rebounds at halftime with supreme, dominant effort. The effects of the 10-day layoff forced by his sprained knee snatched him in the fourth quarter and early in overtime, and he faded, but he never lacked effort. He efforted Sunday.

“I struggled a little bit in that fourth quarter. I was gassed,” he admitted. “I got it back in overtime.”

As champions do.

Harden was brilliant all night. He scored 21 points on 8-of-11 shooting in the first half. He also blocked Grant Williams’ shot Sunday afternoon, the result of perfect pressure defense, his third blocked shot in his past 15 playoff games. It’s not that Harden cannot play effective defense. He just doesn’t care to, usually. When he cares to, he can. He cared to Sunday.

It was contagious. The Sixers might go down, but they’re not going down without a fight. That was obvious from the start.

In the first few minutes of the game, Tobias Harris bodied Jaylen Brown into a foul, Harden drove hard to the basket, Harris backed Marcus Smart to the left block and scored over him, and Embiid drove into Brown’s chest for a second foul less than four minutes into the game. Later, Tyrese Maxey drove, missed, and tipped in his own rebound. Harden drove again, got blocked by Al Horford, but drove yet again and drew a foul on Tatum, and still later drove past Robert Williams.

And this: Early in the third quarter, Harris tried to monster dunk on Marcus Smart and got fouled. The Harris we’ve grown to know would’ve tried to scoop the ball around Smart, five-inch height advantage be damned.

Sunday? Embiid, Harris, Harden, Maxey:

Their hearts grew three sizes that day.