Sixers have become a hot ticket without being a good team | Bob Brookover

Starve the masses long enough and they'll line up for a buffet of bread crumbs. Doesn't that have to be the explanation for the phenomenon taking place with the 76ers right now?

After years of Carl Landry and Kendall Marshall, Alexey Shved and Henry Sims (just to name a few of the players you'd surely love to forget), the Sixers finally gave us a guy last season who made "The Process" worth trusting and watching. Joel Embiid was something special and his ability was on display again Thursday afternoon at the Sixers' practice facility as he went through some shooting drills by draining three-pointer after three-pointer with an adroitness that defies a man of his size.

But really, what we have seen from Embiid is still nothing more than bread crumbs. He played only 31 games last season, which were the first 31 games he had played since being selected with the third overall pick in the 2014 draft. Until we know his surgically repaired right foot and left knee are capable of holding up through an entire season without significant minute and game restrictions, it is nothing but a distant dream to think he can lead the team's resurgence.

It should also be noted that the Sixers were only 13-18 with Embiid on the court, and a .419 winning percentage will buy you an NBA lottery ticket at the end of every season.

And as well as Dario Saric played, does anyone really think he's capable of being more than a piece?

Maybe Markelle Fultz is the savior. That seemed to be the belief when season-ticket sales soared to a team-record 14,000 after the Sixers acquired the rights from Boston to take the University of Washington point guard with the first overall pick in the draft last week.

Christopher Heck, the team's chief sales and marketing officer, told CSNPhilly.com that the record sales were an indication that Philadelphia is "a true sports town" and "a basketball town."

In truth, this is not a great professional basketball town. This is the city where only 6,704 showed up to watch a Game 7 playoff victory over the Milwaukee Bucks on Easter Sunday in 1981. It is a city that has finished in the top 10 in NBA attendance just five times in the last 30 years. I applaud much of that because in many of those years, the Sixers did not provide a product worth paying to watch. But in places such as New York, Chicago, Dallas, and Los Angeles, the NBA fans kept paying even when the teams stopped winning.

Give the Sixers credit for selling tickets before their product is proven. Marketing maestro Pat Croce would be proud. Coach Brett Brown's effervescent personality has to help. He never seems to have a bad day even when he has had a ton of them. He has always seen the light even as NBA trains kept running over his team. Give credit to former general manager Sam Hinkie, too. He has provided the Sixers with a cult following that outlasted him.

Today's 76ers fans, unlike their parents and grandparents, are willing to believe without seeing.

Just the idea of being able to get Fultz inspired so many. Just so you know, I got all your emails regarding my most recent Fultz column and I especially enjoyed the one that wished me a new life covering minor-league baseball in Montana. Do you think that is any different from covering minor-league baseball in Philadelphia?

By the way, I believe Fultz will be a terrific NBA player and I have loved everything he has said and done since he learned he would be coming to Philadelphia. I still would not have given up what the Sixers did to get him, but I promise I will be watching when he plays against Boston's cast of youngsters Monday night in Utah.

"The summer-league level will be good [for Fultz]," said Billy Lange, the Sixers assistant and summer-league coach. "There will be some guys who will be fighting for jobs, so they will be hungry. There will be some players that will have some NBA experience. Last year in our games, we were playing the Spurs and they had Kyle Anderson and Jonathon Simmons on the floor and both those guys had played in playoff games."

It will be the highest level of competition Fultz has faced and we should learn quite a bit about him. The atmosphere in the Las Vegas Summer League last year was intense.

"There are a lot of different journeys going on," Lange said. "You have some guys just trying to make a roster and then you have the No. 1 draft pick. You just talk about it. You don't hide from it. You let them know that there will be a lot of people gunning for Markelle when he plays his first game against the Celtics."

We actually learned a lot about Ben Simmons watching him in last year's summer league. He has special passing skills and suspect shooting ones. But we have not seen him since and, unless something changes, we will not see him again until the exhibition season.

Simmons has never played in an NBA game, and the Sixers' big three that have so many people excited have played in only a combined 31. Nevertheless, expectations are high and season-ticket sales are soaring. It defies logic and the way things had been around here for years.