by Paul Coro, USA TODAY Sports

PHOENIX — The ring of a new year already had long passed, but the Suns still partied like it was 1999 on Wednesday night.

The Suns had cause to celebrate that way because they ended a six-game losing streak with a 95-89 victory over Philadelphia at US Airways Center, putting them within one more victorious night of franchise victory No. 2,000.

Many of those had come in beautiful fashion for a club with a history of beautiful basketball and scorching scorers. This is not the team. It has to win like it did Wednesday night, when it methodically moves the ball on offense and mucks up the game on defense.

It was good enough to close out Wednesday night’s 95-89 victory over Philadelphia at US Airways Center.

Luis Scola, whose 14 points in a 27-17 third quarter turned the game, was the one beating the drum for the Suns to dig deeper and embrace winning dirty long ago.

“Looks like I was right,” Scola said.

No win can be as ugly as the results the Suns have had in the past five weeks with losing streaks of seven games and six games. With how the Suns played Wednesday night, they held the 76ers to 44 percent shooting and lured the league’s second-best ball protection team into 17 turnovers. Not bad for a team which had a pathetic total of three deflections for an entire recent game.

“Defensively, we have to scrap and get after it,” Suns guard/forward Jared Dudley said. “We were more active. We simplified it. Guys were more in tune. For this team, these guys understand that’s how we have to play. People on the outside want to see high scoring, but we just want to get wins. We can’t be worried about how pretty it looks. We have to scrap. We have to claw away.”

The 76ers are 2-7 on the second night of back-to-back sets and 1-18 when not leading after three quarters so the ball was teed for the Suns to change their ways. Still, the Suns had found ways to whiff on victory during a six-game losing streak full of late-game collapses.

This … [For more on Suns end 6-game skid with win vs. Philadelphia, click here.]