How to find joy in rooting for the worst NBA team in the world
Despite the fact that their games have become as predictable and inconsequential as any team in the NBA, the Philadelphia 76ers have managed to dominate a surprisingly large percentage of league discussion in the last few weeks. Since the NBA trade deadline officially turned them into a straight-up junior varsity team, the Sixers have not won a game, with another victory this season not imminently visible in the distance. Now that the question of "Are the Sixers tanking?" appears to have been roundly answered in the affirmative, discussion about the post-deadline Sixers has largely hinged on three related questions:
1. Have the Sixers tanked *too much*?
2. Do the Sixers deserve to be taken to task for tanking so egregiously?
3. How do we fix the system so we don't get more teams like the Sixers next year?
The first question doesn't really interest me, since what's done is essentially done in that respect, and I think it'll take years to conclusively see any lingering after-effects from it, if we ever even do. The second question doesn't do a ton for me either, since I don't see the point in dinging a team for taking advantage of a flawed system, when it's obvious (to me) that it's the system that needs fixing. The third question is a real one, deserving of heavy consideration, but despite what Charles Barkley may say on the subject, it's a situation without an easy answer, one which I won't pretend to have myself here.
Rather, I'd like to talk about something I don't think a lot of people are talking about right now regarding the Sixers: That it's actually kinda fun to watch this team now.
Well, maybe not for everyone. It'd be somewhat asinine of me to recommend the Sixers as your new favorite League Pass team, to act like a team that hasn't won a game in over a month is worth your attention against the Pistons on an average Wednesday night at this point in the season. If you like star power, if you like smart team basketball, if you like game suspense (even in the most very basic, "Do both teams at least have a slight chance to win this game going in?" sense), then this Sixers team probably isn't for you, and I wouldn't try to convince you otherwise.
But as a fan of the team--someone who watches every preseason game, who still at least tries to pay attention in the fourth quarter of blowouts--I find watching this Sixers squad an enjoyable and occasionally even exciting experience. I thought I would know from the beginning of this tankiest of seasons what it's like to watch basketball completely divested of expectation, but Philly's brilliant and thoroughly unexpected 3-0 start threw a wrench into that, as did a similarly unlikely four-game road winning streak at the turn of the calendar year and a couple mind-blowing victories at the buzzer scattered throughout the season. You couldn't say that the Sixers got our hopes up, exactly, but they made it so that you couldn't totally turn off that part of your sports brain that's conditioned to actually care about who wins or loses when you watch your home team.
Now, we're squarely back into exhibition territory. The Sixers have ceased their regular-season play and have regressed back to a second preseason--a "postseason," if that term hadn't already been taken to signify something far more laudatory. The final score of these games might still mean something to the Sixers' opponents on a nightly basis, but for the Sixers themselves, it couldn't really be of less consequence--with 21 games to go, they're already essentially locked into the second seed in the Tanking Rankings (a possibly insurmountable three games behind Milwaukee in the win column), so they can't even lose with purpose at the moment.
That might sound depressing, and on some level it undoubtedly is. But it's also a little bit liberating. When your team goes into a game with absolutely no expectation of or hope for victory, you get to enjoy all the little things without worrying about the bigger picture that they add up to. A couple nights ago in Oklahoma City, Philly lost by 33 in a game that was never close, but I was too gleeful over Byron Mullens' 13-point third quarter and Hollis Thompson's left-handed slam over Serge Ibaka to really notice or care. When Thaddeus Young managed to keep it a game against Dallas in the first post-deadline game by hustling his way to 30 points, 13 boards, six assists and seven steals, I nearly wept with pride. The Sixers are so overmatched in most of these games that any sign of competition from them makes me feel like a soccer parent rooting for my eight-year-old in a game with a bunch of teenagers--even if they don't actually score, just getting a shot off at all is impressive enough.
It's also hard to not get attached to some of these guys, because when your team is composed largely of guys who might not even be in the league in a year or two, any signs of life can make a solidly replacement-level player look like mid-'90s Shaq by comparison. I've particularly fallen head over heels for Henry Sims, an undrafted second-year center picked up from Cleveland in the Spencer Hawes deal. I liked Sims from the Cavs' Summer League, and those feelings have only ballooned from his time on the Sixers. His numbers so far in five Philly games are unexceptional--8.6 PPG and 5.4 RPG on 48% shooting, a 13.7 PER. But every time he makes a competent help defense play, I'm convinced he's the next Roy Hibbert. Every time he makes a solid interior pass to a cutter, I get flashes of Joakim Noah. And every time he makes (well, attempts, I'm not sure he's actually made one yet) a 15-foot baseline jumper, I wonder if he might have Serge Ibaka potential.
Will Sims end up growing into any of these players? Unlikely. Will Sims have a long and illustrious NBA career anyway? You probably wouldn't want to put money on it. Will he even make it to the end of his contract with the Sixers next season? I'd say it's about 50/50 at the moment, mostly because it's a guaranteed deal, at least. But for this year, on this Sixers team, just giving us those inconsistent flashes is enough for us to project all kinds of crazy upside onto him. And it's fun to allow yourself to get overly invested in these guys, because what else is there at the moment, anyway? With winning and losing so beside the point, you may as well go all in on Henry Sims--and if he actually does manage to be a small part of the Sixers' future when they (hopefully) get good again, you can feel like the Green Day fan who owned cassette copies of Kerplunk and 1039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours before they signed with Reprise and hit it big with Dookie. There's something to be said for that.
And you know what? The Sixers will win a game again. Like, this season. I don't know if it'll come next week against the Knicks or Jazz, or next month against the Hawks or Celtics. Hell, it could come in game 82 against the Heat, all but certain to be resting the majority of their decent players for the imminent postseason. But I do not believe they will finish the season on an entirely unprecedented 36-game losing streak. They'll win at least once--Michael Carter-Williams will have an early-season flashback, Hollis Thompson or James Anderson will get weirdly hot behind the arc, Thaddeus Young will get a bunch of steals and Henry Sims will be his future-Hall-of-Famer self. They'll win, and when they do, it'll be like the Sixers winning the Super Bowl and the Best Picture Oscar at once. I can't wait.
Is it as good as actually caring about wins and losses, about watching your team play meaningful basketball against the league's best with the chance of coming out on top? No, of course not--though as Sixer fans, we've long been sold on this part being a necessary first step to take as a franchise to get there. But is it better than this point last year, when Doug Collins was force-feeding us 38 minutes of Damien Wilkins a night in an effort to win just enough games to be taken out of any true lottery contention? Is it better than the weeks leading up to the trade deadline this season, when Evan Turner and Spencer Hawes were playing some of the worst ball of their careers with the imminent end of their Philly tenures forever looming on the horizon? Absolutely.
So hem and haw about the morality of the Sixers' tanking efforts if you'd like, about how it's not fair to fans or the league or to poor, ruined Michael Carter-Williams. I won't disagree, mostly because I'll be too busy trying to figure out if they're selling Henry Sims or Byron Mullens jerseys yet at the Sixers' official website, or if I have to actually go to the Wells Fargo Center to buy one in person. Hope it's the former, but whatever.