Harris on Philly faithful: ‘This is a crowd that boos their own team’

Former 76er Tobias Harris returned to Philly on Wednesday as a member of the Detroit Pistons. Harris, who signed with the Pistons in the offseason after spending five seasons with the 76ers, had 18 points and 14 rebounds.

Philadelphia was playing its fourth consecutive game without Joel Embiid and Paul George, and the Pistons took advantage of this to get their first win of the season, defeating the shorthanded 76ers(1-3) 105-95.

Harris got a mix of boos and cheers from the Philly faithful, but overall, he was happy with the reception he received.

“The reception I thought was great,” Harris said. “There’s obviously going to be boos, there’s obviously going to be people that cheered. In any type of reception, that is how it is. So I knew it wasn’t going to be a tearful moment, I’ll tell you that, I knew that coming in. This is a crowd that boos their own team; that’s kind of just how it is. I thought tonight I just did a good job of staying with it all night. Not letting it get to me, just really embracing my team and these guys. I thought my team did a really good job of keeping me on track of just understanding like, ‘Hey we need you, don’t worry about that’. I think it’s funny because for a lot of guys they were looking at me like ‘Yo you good?’ and I’m like ‘Brother I’ve been through this for a minute now’. I already know what it is. It’s an interesting experience, but overall, just a great game for us.”

Winning in Philly was probably satisfying for Harris, but getting the first win of the season was more satisfying for him.

“For the whole group, this is obviously something, whether you say it or not, it’s been weighing on us to get the first W,” he said. “So to go out on the road, to execute the game plan, and just be locked in all night. I thought our defensive effort out there, we had some really, really good spurts of impacting the basketball and making it hard for them to get good looks off, so I thought we did a great job at that. Just a collective effort from everybody. Guys coming and stepping up.”