One of my truly cherished memories of the Joel Embiid era — one that maybe has gotten lost to time a little — was Game Three against the Heat in 2022. He’d gotten elbowed in the eye by Pascal Siakam at the end of a Sixers blowout victory to close out the Raptors in the first round, and reports said that it fucked him up so bad he could barely even look at his phone in the days to follow. His return was without a timetable, and with DeAndre Jordan starting in his stead, the first two games of our second-round series in Miami were both absolute laughers, as we wondered if the series would be over before we could even have a serious conversation about Joel’s return.

But against all odds, Embiid made it back for Game Three in Philly. His numbers in the game were pretty meh by his standards — 18 and 11, four turnovers to one assist — but the lift he gave the Sixers, particularly on defense, was enough to power a 99-79 victory. It really seemed like he had saved the season, and after a superlative James Harden performance in Game Four knotted the series at 2-2, it felt like a potential turning point in the Big Man’s entire career arc. Then Miami steamrolled Philly in the next two games, and it was immediately back to Same Old Sixers. But still, the emotional wallop of watching a masked Embiid gut out that Game Three victory, pushing his body to the absolute limit just to be there for his team and for us, is a feeling I’ll never forget.

Sunday night against Boston could have felt like that too. Maybe it did for a few minutes. But instead of saving the Sixers from oblivion in Game Four, this time Embiid’s return game brought them back to its edge, halting the momentum of a series that had gone better than expected and raising the usual barrage of questions both practical and existential about what the hell we’re even doing here. And I can’t even get mad at any of it anymore — at Joel, at his teammates, at management, even at the Celtics. All I am now is sad.

I’m certainly not surprised. Though after his availability for Game Four was officially announced, my timeline was filled with Sixers fans predicting Joel’s return could very easily bring the series even with Boston — perhaps even give them the edge moving forward — all I could really think about was the ways it could go wrong.

Certainly, I had visions of Jo taking an elbow to the midsection from a Sam Hauser type and walking gingerly to the locker room as a million Philadelphians Googled “How easy is it for stitches to get torn out after an appendectomy?” But more practically, I thought of Embiid predictably struggling in his first game action in nearly three weeks, of the shot not going down and the ball going the other way as he tried to force shit that just wasn’t there. And more importantly, I thought of him knocking the rest of the team out of the groove they’d developed in three games in this series, of Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe being overly deferential as the team tried to get him going early, and then being unable to quickly microwave themselves once it came time to provide offense of their own.

In truth, Joel’s own performance went a little better than I expected. Yes, he was out of rhythm — only three for his first 12, missing the kind of open mid-rangers that he can usually hit in a Shirley Temple-induced coma when he’s really rolling — but he never forced anything, generally taking the shots that were available for him, and actually moving the ball quite well to try to get his teammates going at the same time. And after hitting his groove in the third quarter, his final stat line was totally reasonable for a first game back against a good defense, and far superior to that night four years ago against Miami: 26 points on 21 shots, with 10 boards and six assists to just three turnovers.

But it didn’t matter. The rest of the team couldn’t figure out anything on offense: Embiid grinded his way to 10 points in the first quarter, but his teammates could only combine for eight total, as Payton Pritchard started shooting holy hellfire from his fingertips and the C’s sped out to a 16-point lead. The Sixers clanged away any hopes at a comeback effort from there: Neither Joel nor anyone else could hit in the second quarter, and when Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown got hot in the third as Pritchard refused to cool down, that was pretty much it. I spent most of the fourth quarter reading Keith Richards’ autobiography Life while the Sixers ran out the clock on a game — and in all likelihood a series — that had long slipped away from them.

Four years ago, I probably would have been angry about this game — about the offense crumpling around Joel, about the defense making it too easy for Boston, about Nick Nurse’s rotations and challenges raising a lot of process questions that last night’s results absolutely did not answer, about Payton fucking Pritchard. I haven’t heard last night’s Ricky yet, but I’m confident Mike was able to bring the fury of a Southern Baptist minister incensed that his congregation seemed to be losing the battle to Satan. I’m sure a lot of Sixers fans feel the same way. Maybe I should too.

Unfortunately, I can’t get past the level of it is what it is. Because it really is: None of this should have been hard to see coming, either from this year’s Sixers and Celtics or the respective histories of the two teams the past decade. The last two games in this series — a shocker Sixers win in Boston and then a to-the-wire C’s victory in Philly — gave us hope that the gap between these teams wasn’t as big as we’d believed at the beginning of the series, and particularly after the Celtics’ Game One blowout, and I do still think that it probably isn’t. But however big that gap truly is, if we thought it was going to get immediately bridged in this series by a sooner-than-expected Embiid return from injury, we really just haven’t been paying close enough attention the last year, or the last 10.

In our heads, us Sixers fans have this fantasy vision of a late-career Joel who just kinda comes and goes from the lineup unobtrusively: one who’s not the offensive threat he once was, and doesn’t get fed the ball like he is, but who can occasionally bail the Sixers out of late-clock situations, hit a wide-open jumper when passed to, and just be a general upgrade in intelligence and ability on both sides of the ball from whoever the team’s current backup C is. We dream of a version of Embiid who only adds, never subtracts — sort of the big man version of what Paul George is currently giving us, where he’ll never win us a game totally on his own, but he can maybe hold down his part for long enough to at least give the team’s younger guys the chance to do so themselves.

That version of Joel has never come for this team, and at this point I think we should probably accept it’s not going to. He’s still just too fucking good on offense, too fucking valuable, even at some limited percentage of health and capability, to stash him in the corner or dunker’s spot and have him be a bystander to the team’s primary action. Maxey is never going to watch Joel set a pick at the top of the key and either roll to the basket or pop to behind the arc as both defenders wall off his own drive and not think to himself I should get the ball to Joel. Boston seemed to both anticipate and encourage this last night, blitzing Maxey and leaving Joel relatively unattended for jumper after jumper. They knew that even after so many years and so much time missed, even after the past two Sixers-Celtics games went the way they went without him, that the team would still default to Jo Ball — and that most likely, things would unravel for the Sixers from there.

Again, I’m not really blaming anyone for any of this. Not Joel, who’s just doing what’s come naturally to him for a decade now, and who has an MVP, multiple scoring titles, and an eventual ticket to Springfield after he retires to show for it. (And who even in this limited and frustrating season for him, still averaged 27 points a night with a PER around 25.) And not Tyrese, who for sure could’ve stood to be a little more aggressive last night, but who generally got the ball to the Big Man in his spots — which has been the answer to qualify offense for this team for Maxey’s entire career. Not the rest of the team, who (outside of PG) couldn’t hit a shot to save their lives or season— that shit’s frustrating as hell, certainly, but there are gonna be games like that in the playoffs, especially for a team knocked out of their rhythm, and especially from a guy like VJ who’s never been here before. And I certainly don’t blame the franchise itself for bringing Joel back in the first place: However close this series was, Philly absolutely wasn’t winning it without him, so holding him out in the hopes we could bow out in a slightly neater and feel-goodier fashion would’ve been unimaginably losery, even by Sixers standards.

But despite the lack of anyone to truly hold accountable for it, the result is that now, everything feels bad. The Celtics have once again wrested control of the series. The Sixers have once again fallen on their faces in front of a cackling national audience and a pissed-off local one, courting boos from the home fans and sarcastic (and disconcertingly loud) chants from the away fans. Joel Embiid has once again stepped up to be the hero and will have to once again slink away as a failure. The series isn’t technically over yet, but it may as well be: The idea of winning one more game against Boston suddenly seems impossibly daunting again, let alone each of the next three. We’re out of time for this season.

And of course, we may be out of time for this team, period. As we’ve reiterated time and time again, this season went about as good as could reasonably be expected for the Sixers — 45-37, with half a healthy and productive Embiid season, another leap from Maxey and a breakthrough rookie campaign from Edgecombe — and it still couldn’t get us anywhere but here. Joel got one more chance to rewrite his playoff narrative — not a particularly good chance, mind you, but a chance — and failing some miracle end to this series, has instead written one more chapter like all the rest. Maybe this time it’s the last chapter.

But I should say here — and I probably should’ve said it much earlier in this column — that I love, love, love Joel Embiid for the game he played last night. I love him for playing in it at all. I love how hard he fought to get back here, that after spending such an unfair percentage of his career waging battles against his own body, he still had it in him to go back into that breach once more. I love that after all these years, he still wants to be out there, that he still wants the chance to put right what for so many seasons and so many reasons has gone wrong, that he still believes he can and should will us to a different end to the story this time. I love that even though some part of him probably knows at this point it’s all going to end in heartbreak, he’d rather the heartbreak come with him on the floor than him on the sidelines. If he had finished 4-21 for 13 points and given way to Adem Bona for the entire fourth quarter, I still would have loved him for it. At some point down the road, we’ll all look back on Joel’s career and love him just as much for his hard-fought failures like this as we do for any of his achievements.

In the moment, though, it’s just sad. Sad that we’re gonna lose to Boston again, sad that we have no idea what the version of this team that could possibly actually beat Boston might look like. Sad that Joel deserves a warrior’s reception today and will instead be treated like a punchline. Sad that this team is more likely to break up than to make up by this time next season. Sad that it’s been 10 years of this shit. Sad that it’s been an entire lifetime of this shit. So very, very sad about us.

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Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the ‘If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders’ section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.

Joel Embiid triumphantly returned, then the Sixers triumphantly got their asses kicked. They trail 3-1. The season is on the brink.

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No game till Sunday night, so a new Carl Landry Record Club right now.

We discuss the album ‘A Light That Waits’ by The Fray and the new song “Etyd” by Jose Gonzalez.

*This episode was recorded on Sunday, April 12, 2026

For all of Mutlu’s tour dates and tickets visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.mutlusounds.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠

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The intro music is “I Should Let You Know” by Marian Hill.

Well, the Sixers didn’t win, but they also didn’t embarrass us. We talk about the game, and the potential return of Joel Embiid.

Donate to Spike’s Walk For Paws fundraiser for the BVSPCA here: https://secure.qgiv.com/event/2026walkforpaws/account/2277596/

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There are several layers to being a Sixers fan at this point.

When I say “being a Sixers fan,” I mean in the way that we are Sixers fans. Not in the way that most people in the Delaware Valley would of course, prefer to see the Sixers win. I mean in that being a fan of this team is part of your identity to other people, whether you choose for it to be or not. It’s sort of like when I got a cat years ago (rest in peace, Alabama, love you), and even though I didn’t choose it, I immediately became a cat guy to my mom and many others. Cat birthday cards, etc… Oh, that’s Spike, he has a cat and he likes it so he must be a cat guy. I mean that kind of Sixers fan.

The layer I’m going to write about is the layer of having to answer for the team, even though you had nothing to do with it. And the material piece of information here is what you’re going to have to answer for if Joel Embiid comes back and the Sixers lose anyway. Particularly, if he comes back tonight (he is listed as doubtful), and the Sixers end up losing the series 4-1, so the final win we see is the VJ/Maxey game in game two.

This is, no doubt, a nightmare for this kind of Sixers fan. Not just because the Sixers will have lost to the Celtics again, which you’re likely very emotionally prepared for, but because you’re going to have to argue about Joel Embiid again.

“I told you they should have gotten rid of him!”

“They just play with so much more hunger when he’s not there!”

“They’re just so much more exciting without him!”

And although there might be some morsel of truth in these things they say, I must recommend you do not even engage. Your response should be, “haha yeah,” and nothing more. If it’s in text messages or group chats, just “haha yeah,” and come back later. If it’s in person, it’s obviously tougher, but the less interested you seem and the less your blood pressure raises, the better.

The well actually route is just going to make you insane, and this is coming from a card carrying member of the Well Actually… Hall of Fame.

Last Chance To Save These Poor Dogs That Don’t Have Homes

This is going to be the last money ask for a while. I’m just $391 from my goal of raising $10,000 for the Brandywine Valley SPCA and their mission to save as many of these dogs and cats (also the occasional bunny or goat) as possible. I look at my two idiots, Rebel and Scotchie, and realize how they’ve changed my life. I figure it’s my job to make sure I can save as many Rebels and Scotchies as possible. You can donate here. If you’ve already donated, or even have just shared this, thank you so much (to be clear it’s a slightly larger thank you if you donated than if you just just shared).

Team Ricky

• Beckett looked at the numbers of a Sixers vs. Celtics series and how the Sixers might be able to shock the world.

• We did a Carl Landry Record Club pod about an album from an artist named Samora Pinderhughes that I had never heard but am glad I did. Very cool album. New pod about the new album from The Fray coming out this weekend.

• If you’d like to suggest an album you love for the Carl, just submit it here.

• The pod after Game 2 was a fun one. Also, we had noted that some of the playoff pods might not happen right after the game, that is no longer true. Mike’s finished with his writing duties for the second season of The Paper, so we’re right on time now.

Team Non-Ricky

• Sixers Adam’s substitution chart from Game 2. Great job, Sixers Adam, on charting the substitutions again.

• Jeremy Lin is trying to gaslight us about Nick Nurse. I love Jeremy Lin but I will not forget this.

• Lastly, I have to admit, I’m Flyered up. There was a part of me that was like, “I do not have time to add the NHL playoffs to the diet of sports I have to watch,” but it is nice to watch a team in that spot we were in 2017, when the team was young, had no expectations, and everyone figured was going to get better for the next several years. The poor Flyers die-hards have no idea what’s about to happen next year, when everyone just assumes they’ll win the Stanley Cup, but for now, this is fun.

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We’re not embarrassed! VJ Edgecombe balled out, the Sixers stepped up, and Andre Drummond hit a three. We talk about all of it and say who we’re rooting for in the rest of the playoffs.

Donate to Spike’s Walk For Paws fundraiser for the BVSPCA here: https://secure.qgiv.com/event/2026walkforpaws/account/2277596/

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The Sixers went down early, then progressively went down by more and more as the game went on. Not great! But we do have some fun Doc Rivers quotes to laugh at.

Donate to Spike’s Walk For Paws fundraiser for the BVSPCA here: https://secure.qgiv.com/event/2026walkforpaws/account/2277596/

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So it’s the Celtics again.

I’m not like Spike in his apparent apathy towards the Celtics. Growing up in Philly, there is a distinct hatred towards the Celtics that’s built into your childhood — and that was before I went to school in Boston the year the Celtics won the championship. So it would mean a great deal to me if the Sixers could bump their playoff series record over the last decade to 1-3 instead of 0-4 in this particular matchup.

Is that likely? No. Honestly, I’m not even sure it’s possible. Fair warning, I’m going to have to crush some hopes and dreams here first before I try to find some optimism. But every game counts, so let’s see if we can outline what the Sixers can do to make this series at least look competitive.

Now you might be a little doubtful of my pessimism, so let’s start first with why this matchup is so challenging in the first place.

For starters, the Celtics are just significantly better than the Sixers, even regardless of the availability of Joel Embiid, ranking fourth in the NBA in net rating (+8.4) and sitting in the top five in the league in both offensive and defensive efficiency. If both teams play to their standard — the Sixers’ standard of course still being their negative net rating of -0.3, good for 18th in the league — we can’t compete.

However, even beyond their general skill, the Celtics are a brutal matchup for a variety of reasons. These are the keys that will decide the series — let’s break them down one by one.

Offensive Rebounding

You thought the Knicks were a bad matchup because of offensive rebounds? The Celtics actually grab a higher percentage of their misses than the Knicks, ranking fifth in the NBA in ORB%. Not only that, but they also rank eighth in scoring efficiency on those putback chances. If the Sixers can’t defensive rebound — and there’s absolutely no reason to think they suddenly will — it’s going to be incredibly difficult to get stops defensively.

Transition Scoring

Not being able to rebound and end possessions also hurts the Sixers’ offense. Beyond steals, defensive rebounds are the best way to get out in the open floor, where Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe can make a difference. Like most teams, the Sixers have also been much more efficient when playing with pace, with a 126.0 offensive rating in transition (16th in the NBA) compared to just a 96.3 offensive rating in the halfcourt (23rd in the NBA). However, this is another area where the Celtics make for a brutal matchup, as Boston ranks third in the NBA in transition defense, both in efficiency allowed and in limiting transition opportunities overall. Without the ability to get easy buckets in the open floor, I find it difficult to see where consistent offense will come from.

Ball Security

The Sixers’ main defensive strength this year is their turnover creation, ranking eighth in the NBA at creating disruption, and it helps them get out and run. Unfortunately, the Celtics are once again a tough matchup here, ranking second in the league at limiting turnovers offensively. But this is not an area the Sixers can afford to let Boston control.

Given the edge the Celtics already have in the possession battle through offensive rebounding and the way turnovers can spark transition chances, the Sixers need to be able to exert their influence here. If the Celtics control the ball this whole series, we’ll be lucky to get a single game.

Three-Point Shooting (maybe some hope here!)

The Celtics are notorious for getting up a ton of threes — and they followed that strategy once again this year, ranking third in the league in three-point volume, taking nearly 44% of their attempts from beyond the arc (even this is fairly low for them, having taken over 50% of their shots from deep last season). The Sixers, as we all know, just absolutely adore giving up looks from beyond the arc, especially if they can find a way to make sure they’re wide-open ones.

However, within these overarching stats, there’s a bit of an interesting split. While the Celtics are first in the NBA by a mile with their non-corner three-point volume, they actually rank 29th in their volume from the corner itself. The Sixers’ strengths have a similar discrepancy, ranking 14th-lowest in their non-corner three-point volume, but 24th volume allowed from the corner — which makes sense, because that’s typically the shot you concede out of aggressive help and trapping. The Sixers are also fourth in their efficiency allowed on non-corner threes, meaning the matchup from beyond the arc might not be quite as lopsided as it might appear at first glance.

That doesn’t mean the Sixers should feel good about giving up threes — the Celtics shoot over 42% on corner attempts (fourth in the NBA), so please, stop overhelping for one damn series Nick — but it does introduce a path. If the Sixers can keep the ball out of the corner and live with the right shots, there’s at least a version of this series where Boston goes cold for a game or two and gives a glimmer of hope.

Now unfortunately, that’s about as optimistic as I can get in this series. These teams have shown all year how good they are, and I don’t expect a miraculous change now. So try not to get too upset when the Sixers give up three offensive rebounds in a possession (just typing this is making me annoyed, so I don’t know how realistic that is, but give it a shot). Simply enjoy the ride for what it is and find the fun in VJ’s first playoffs or watching Drummond take seven corner threes in a game when Mazulla refuses to acknowledge he’s on the floor. Because at some point, belief has to meet reality, and this series is where that happens.

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The Sixers start the playoffs tomorrow, against the Celtics (again).

Here’s a new episode of The Carl Landry Record Club to help you pass the time.

We discuss the album ‘Venus Smiles Not In The House Of Tears’ by Samora Pinderhughes, and Spacey Jane’s song “Do You Really Love Her.”

*This episode was recorded on Sunday, March 19, 2026

For all of Mutlu’s tour dates and tickets visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.mutlusounds.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠

To suggest an album hit the link below:

The intro music is “I Should Let You Know” by Marian Hill.

This is Carl Landry Record Club episode #189

The Boston Celtics really don’t bother me that much, all things considered. They never have. I don’t like them, but also, I don’t really hate them.

I have a hard time lying about how I feel regarding these sports things. I’m not good at faking optimism. I could never put a brave face on and just say I loved watching Ben Simmons. It would probably make my life slightly easier as some kind of public facing Sixers fan if I could.

If I’m thinking about Eastern Conference teams that I truly hate, the Celtics aren’t even close to the top. I hate the Knicks. I know this is rich considering my history, but it’s true. I hate the fans, I hate the whole weird, fake tough, “We’re New York bro!” aura of both the fans and the team to be really just disgusting. I hate the Heat, “Heat Culture,” and the way everyone slobbers over them and their overrated coach. The Bucks have always truly annoyed me, them getting Doc Rivers was just the icing on the cake.

But the Celtics? Meh. It’s annoying that they’ve already eliminated the Process Sixers three times in the playoffs, but it’s not their fault they’re better than we are. I couldn’t stand Al Horford, but he’s gone. Kyrie was a little annoying, but he’s gone. I can’t really imagine Tatum or Brown inspiring much emotion at all either way. If I’m being honest, I mostly love Joe Mazzulla and wish we had him coaching our team more than a guy who spends most of his free time binging Pitchfork reviews, waiting for like Kurt Vile to invite him to a jam session.

In fact, when I’m thinking about this year’s Sixers, being eliminated by James Harden or Tobias Harris would be way more annoying. Being eliminated by the Knicks while their fans, drenched in axe body spray and false bravado paraded through the halls of The Eczema would be worse. Losing to the Celtics almost seems like the most merciful of all of our possible killings.

Mike will have to be your guy on this one.

Save These Doggies

I’ve got about 8 days to help get our team to over $10,000 raised for the Brandywine Valley SPCA. We’re about $3,000 away. Won’t you help me?

Verb Starter Pack

If you’ve wanted to try Verb Energy bars (protein or otherwise), they’ve got this starter pack now. It’s 10 bars for $20, and if you use the code RTRS at checkout, you get another 20% off. The bars have fit quite nicely into my life replacing the shitty for me Diet Soda I’d always have around noon.

Team Ricky

We did a Ricky after the Orlando game. It’s available everywhere now. It wasn’t available for about 16 hours on Apple and many other platforms besides Spotify. I want to be clear that this was not our fault. I don’t mean to sound like Doc Rivers here, but really we’re not the ones to blame.

I have to say, for once, I agree with AU. But he keeps talking about how he can’t talk himself into them beating the Celtics, though. I can tell it’s just below the surface.

Team Non Ricky

Sixers Adam on the ramifications of no Lottery Party this year. I’m so happy I don’t have to plan a Lottery Party this year. Not because it would mean the Sixers didn’t make the playoffs, and not because I don’t like Lottery Parties. I just didn’t feel like planning it. Win for me.

I was on House of Strauss earlier this week to talk about the NBA at large and some other stuff with Ethan Sherwood-Strauss.

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We woke up to messages telling us the podcast was not working on non-Spotify platforms (it wasn’t).

If it still doesn’t work for you on Apple, or wherever you listen, please try Spotify or YouTube as we try to fix it some more (essentially begging someone else to fix it).

Sorry. Go Sixers.

Spike

It was a really weird feeling last night going into the start of the postseason already feeling pretty hopeless. As bad as things have ever gotten with the Sixers during the seven playoff runs they’ve had during the Joel Embiid era, I don’t think we’ve ever kicked off the second season feeling so mentally defeated. We’ve been underdogs in the first round, but at the very least, we always had Joel — there was the chance he could pull off a miracle practically by his lonesome, or at least do enough cool shit in an eventual losing effort to make us feel good about the future.

But this year, there’s no Joel, and there’s not much hope for this team’s future, at least not one with him still in it. There’s not much dread or despair, even. There just isn’t much of anything. In truth, I barely even thought about the play-in game before last night — if you’d asked me my prediction for it (or even just my general take on it) I probably would’ve just shrugged. The outcome felt pretty low-variance: Losing would’ve been bad, but also kinda whatever, and winning would’ve been good, but not really that good.

Well, the game happened. The Sixers won. And yeah, it wasn’t that good. But it was good. It felt good. I dunno how much there is to say about its larger meaning, but it’s a thing I’m really glad happened — a little more glad than I would have expected.

To get it out of the way, because it’d feel dishonest not to start with it: This felt way more like an Orlando Magic loss than a Philadelphia 76ers win. My main thought as the Sixers started to very sort of take control in the second half was how much I would fucking hate to be an Orlando Magic fan right now, to have this pretty impressive core of young players who just don’t seem to be going in the right direction together at all, who seem to be capping out at the same ceiling as the Oladipo/Gordon/Vucevic teams of yore and who need their veteran hired gun to have one of the best offensive games of his career to even be able to compete in the play-in. And now Paolo Banchero is scared to shoot? Better them than us, for once in this life.

But even if the win was more about the other team falling apart than ours coming together, it did still feel like a growth win for the Sixers. It was one of the most complete games they’ve played all season without Joel — they played hard on both sides of the ball, they crashed the glass surprisingly effectively, they created turnovers when they needed to and they never let a couple bad possessions in a row spiral into a total collapse. They even won the third quarter by one point! More than any individual performance, I was heartened by just how much they fought in this one as a team, down to the bench guys really popping for some of the best moments like a bench mob should. (Shoutout Playoff Cheerleader Kyle Lowry, who’s 100% gonna leave it all on the sideline floor for this upcoming Celtics series.)

And there were a lot of great individual performances too! Tyrese Maxey had that killer fourth-quarter run we desperately needed to keep the Magic at arm’s length, and a huge block in the final minutes to keep them from getting back in it. VJ Edgecombe was up and down but basically had the meet-the-moment plays on both sides of the ball we needed to confirm that Playoff VJ was gonna be even doggier than the regular season version. Paul George hit the shots he had to hit. Kelly Oubre Jr splashed a whole bunch of threes. Adem Bona sent Banchero to a deep, dark place and he had fun doing it. Andre Drummond... maybe played the game of his entire life? Considering we only played eight guys and didn’t get much from Quentin Grimes or Dominick Barlow, it still felt like a surprisingly full team.

The offense was still very, very rough in stretches. Tyrese Maxey had a lot of drives to nowhere, VJ had four turnovers trying to do too much, and as is always the case without Joel out there, the pick-and-roll just doesn’t work as a bread-and-butter play when nobody gives a fuck about accounting for the roll man. (Although now that Andre Drummond has unexpectedly turned into Nikola Jokic with ups, perhaps that won’t be the case much longer.) It’s hard to see this team having enough offensive juice to outscore a team like oh I don’t know let’s just say the Boston Celtics, especially when said team gets a whole bunch of chances to learn the ins and outs of their not-that-sophisticated-or-varied offensive schemes.

So I’m not exactly talking myself into this team having a real chance in the first round just yet. If Maxey stays hot and VJ continues to get stronger, a stolen game isn’t out of the question — maybe even in Boston? — and the more I think about it, the more likely it seems that, for better or worse, Joel will try to hurry himself back for a late-series cameo if it goes long enough. But beating Boston four times? Beating Boston three times, even? It’s tough to see the roadmap there. Good vibes and low expectations are great and all, but a lot of times, those only last until the first timeout in Boston where Payton Pritchard is whooping up the crowd, and Jayson Tatum is doing the This Is My House and Horf is there for some reason and all of a sudden everything feels totally hopeless again.

But if nothing else, it’s nice to see the guys get a signature win without Jo. We don’t know what the future holds for the Sixers or for the big man, but playing big games without him is something the Sixers are going to have to do a decent amount of pretty much regardless, and having the confidence to know they can hold tough in a basically do-or-die scenario without The Process on the floor will undoubtedly be meaningful for them moving forward. The guys need those reps eventually, may as well start getting them now.

And most importantly: The “We Want Boston” chant at the Excema last night? Fucking aces, man. I was a little incredulous about it at first, of course — we emphatically *do not* want Boston and never legitimately have in my lifetime — but it was a great moment of a temporarily sauced-up fanbase piling it on and going back for seconds, because really, why not? We haven’t gotten a lot of feeling-ourselves moments lately, and we might get even fewer of ‘em in the months to come. Let the Cus Crisers throw it back in our faces after their douchebag’s sweep of us; that’s two-weeks-from-now’s problem. We’ll never want Boston, but we do still want basketball moments like last night. It was good to be reminded of that.

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Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the ‘If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders’ section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.

If it still doesn’t work for you on Apple, or wherever you listen, please try Spotify or YouTube as we try to fix it some more (essentially begging someone else to fix it).

Sorry. Go Sixers.

Spike

The Sixers put together a good team win over the Magic. It was the Drummond game, the Maxey game, the Oubre game, etc… We talk about the win (it counts), Embiid returning to the team, and the series against the Celtics.

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There may be this this postseason where we are not live immediately after the game. We could be later that night, or even the next morning. This was the only way we could guarantee that we’d have me and Mike on the pod for all of the postseason games (maybe it’s just two! Maybe it’s seven! Who knows!).

We love AU and Sixers Adam and are genuinely thankful for their ability to fill in over the last couple of months, but all things considered we think it’s important for these pods to be me and Mike.

Mike and my work schedule are occasionally at odds, and Mike’s often times (for the next couple of weeks) has him working late into the evening. In these cases, we’ll either do the pod much later that evening, or early the next morning. There is of course, the possibility that the timing works out and we’re live right after the game.

We’re just letting you know so you know that we’ll be there… eventually.

Go Sixers?

Spike

The Sixers beat the Bucks, and the Magic lost to the backup Celtics, so the Sixers will host the play-in game on Wednesday in Philadelphia. We talk about what we’re hoping to get out of the play-in and playoffs, more on the Embiid and his appendicitis, an amazing clip of Michael Rubin talking about the White Party, and Mike gets to hear the new Doc Rivers song as he gets fired.

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This was never going to work. We all knew it was never going to work. There was no chance that this Sixers season was going to result in the playoff success we all so desperately crave and deserve. Still, I’m glad they gave it a try.

There will be many people in the next days or weeks or months that say that the right thing for the Sixers to do with Embiid was move on from him a few years ago, and with him, this era of Sixers basketball. I will probably even be one of these people.

The debate will not be if they should have, but when they should have. Perhaps the best time may have been immediately after his MVP season as, insane as that sounds, as it may have been the last time he had positive value in a trade — but there was still fair skepticism that it was “ever going to work.” It would obviously certainly be before they gave him the extension and then went and doubled down on him with signing Paul George for four years and $212 million.

Still, I’m still glad they’re going to be a year late on that decision rather than a year early, even if it is the wrong thing strategically. It’s just the right thing for my soul… to make sure they gave this thing every chance they could have. There will be what-ifs in every scenario, but I am, we all are, so emotionally invested in Joel Embiid’s success in the same way (if not more) we’re invested in the team’s success, that one “what-if” I am not sure if I’d have been able to resolve would have been “what if we had just given it one more chance, and done it a little differently?”

I know this will probably result in the Sixers being in basketball purgatory until at least the end of this decade. But I just think leaving no stone unturned with this particular guy, for this particular era, is something I needed. Even if I have said or will say differently.

Unfortunately sometimes you turn over all the stones and there’s nothing underneath.

PS: We only have two weeks left to raise a few more thousand dollars for homeless animals for Brandywine Valley SPCA’s Walk For Paws. We want to get to $10,000. Also, I want to be the #1 team and quite honestly we’re in danger of falling to #3. Donate here. It will help dogs like Diamond.

Team Ricky

• AU wrote something about whether or not he’s gonna be able to talk himself into this Sixers team having any kind of shot at a postseason run (spoiler alert I’m sure he will).

• Beckett Sanderson put all this work into his numbers piece that is very good, and looks at whether Dominic Barlow or Kelly Oubre should be the sixth starter. Hours later, with the release of the Embiid news, it tuns out it doesn’t matter at all! Who gives a fuck! They were going to lose in the first round anyway but now this is even a bigger waste! Welcome to the team Beckett, it’s always like this.

• Here’s the podcast we did on Thursday night after the Rockets loss about the Embiid news. At least we had some fun Doc stuff to laugh about.

Team Everyone Else

• KOC broke the news on how NBA Lottery reform is going to work. I don’t think it’s going to work. It’s almost obviously not going to work. They should have consulted us.

• Here’s the thing Shams wrote about the Bucks with the awesome Doc Rivers anecdote from the pod.

• Sixers Adam is keeping everyone updated on the Sixers playoff/play-in scenarios.

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The more time I have to internalize the likely season-ending — for him, for them, for us — news that Joel Embiid is suffering from appendicitis, the more I’m just glad it happened now and not a week ago. After the back-to-back wins against Chicago and Charlotte (ah for the simpler times of fighting over Best Wins of the Season), and after the VJ Edgecombe-led Hospital Sixers went 5-2, and after it seemed like we were finally getting healthy at the right time, the rug getting swept from under Joel’s feet yet again would have been devastating. It still is, kinda, but it’s a gentler crush coming after two bad losses to the Pistons and Spurs — and right before a quickly inevitable L to the Rockets — which had already removed a sizeable amount of the dip from our collective chip. Now, the sudden reminder of this team being cursed anyway feels less like “Ah c’mon, really??” and more “Yep, checks out.”

The fact of the matter is, even when this team was good, they weren’t that good, and even when they were totally healthy, they weren’t that much better. As Beckett pointed out in his most recent article (and Spike cited on last night’s pod), the two main lineups this team ultimately had to decide between for their postseason starting five had produced results that were just slightly varying shades of mid — and that was supposed to be them at the Sixers’ best and fullest. Maybe in a perfect world, the healthy version of this team would’ve gotten four months together to build familiarity and optimize lineup patterns and become best buds on and off the court, but that perfect world might not exist for any NBA franchise in 2026, and certainly not this one. This one was always gonna be a little leaky, and with Joel now out for weeks if not longer, there’s a big hole in the center that the team can’t possibly hope to plug quickly enough.

In other words, this is gonna be my biggest challenge of Sixers sicko self-delusion yet.

Generally speaking, I’d like to think at this point that my work in the field speaks for itself. I’ve talked myself into the Sixers winning it all in the pandemic season, into Justin Edwards being better than Paul George, into Tobias Harris being different this season (??), into the Knicks series loss being a good thing for the team long-term, actually. When Joel suffered an orbital fracture against the Raptors at the end of their first-round series in 2022, it took me like an hour of airport drinking to decide that fuck it, we were gonna beat the Heat in the second round anyway. Even when I maybe didn’t totally 100% believe it, I’ve always felt it.

This one is proving tough for me to feel. The Sixers dropping three straight games they really needed to win at least one of means they’re practically guaranteed a play-in spot, which means a strong chance of a pre-playoff exit and a best-case result of a first-round matchup with the wildly superior Pistons or Celtics. None of those scenarios would inspire optimism for the Sixers even if they were fully healthy; the fact that they’ll be without Embiid means you need a magnifying glass the size of Texas to find the slightest crumbs of hope for a path to an upset, or even a feel-good-ish loss.

On the podcast last night I felt obligated to at least ask if it was worth playing the calendar game with Joel, wondering if there was some universe where we could extend our playoff timeline long enough to once again contemplate Jo rejoining for part of it. Spike shut me down, and rightly so: The playoffs begin in nine days and Jo’s surgery almost certainly will knock him out for a minimum of three weeks. We’d basically need a seven-game series to have any hope of him coming back in the first round, and even then he’d have to rush back in a way likely no one would or should be comfortable with. I don’t know if there’s any road map to Sixers optimism this postseason, no matter how skewed, that involves Jo playing a part in the first round.

So is there any way to talk ourselves into getting to round two without him? We do still have two all-stars on this team, and we’ve got Kelly Oubre Jr and Quentin Grimes and VJ Edgecombe and let me stop me right there because we’ve seen way too much of what this team looks like without Joel to really go much further with this one. The Jo-less version of this team couldn’t beat the Hawks once this year, let alone the Pistons or Celtics four times. Hell, we saw how overmatched the Jo-less squad looked against Detroit a week ago, and that was when the Pistons were still missing Cade Cunningham and Isaiah Stewart, both of whom have since returned from injury. Besides, Tyrese Maxey still looks hurt or fed up or both, and relying on Paul George to save your season is like relying on DJ Khaled to elevate your new single. If these are the guys we’re hoping to shock the world with right now, a new slant might be something we need to find.

The best I can do right now is VJ. Not that I’m trying to sell you or myself on him being able to lead the team to the second round and a Joel reunion essentially on his own, but he can give us something real to root for. While Maxey seems to be getting increasingly smothered by the baggage of his six seasons in Philly and PG seems to be weighing his give-it-all on a possession by possession basis, VJ is still howling at the moon. He’s crashing for offensive rebounds, he’s lunging for deflections, he’s trying to dunk on everyone and multiple generations of their dead relatives. He still wants to win, and he still wants that winning to matter. No matter how stacked the deck is against the Sixers right now, he’s the one guy we can count on to keep battling until he’s dragged away from the table.

And so I at least want him to get a taste of the real thing. Even if it’s just in a sweep, even if his numbers don’t ultimately end up being all that, even if it comes against the fucking Celtics. I want him to get out of the play-in and into the playoffs, and I want to see what four-plus games of Playoff VJ looks like. I may not be delusional enough to think we can win a series, but I bet you I can talk myself into VJ winning us a game. Maybe he comes up with a steal on a pivotal possession? Maybe he finally gets that big poster he’s been hunting all season? Maybe it’s on fucking Jayson Tatum or Al Horford (who’s undoubtedly somehow found his way back to Boston by now)? Any one such memory could keep us warm throughout what’s looking to be a bitterly cold summer offseason.

Plus, who knows — VJ gives the team a bit of a spark in the play-in, maybe the guys start catching his vibe a little... could there be life left in this team? Could there be a one-last-go-around mentality that takes hold, knowing that almost certainly the team is going to look very different at the start of next year? Could going in with odds this long be just the thing the team needs to rally behind and produce the miracle we’ve so long hoped for with them? Ehhhhhhh... we’re probably getting a little ahead of ourselves here. Let’s see if an historically unburdened VJ can get this team to the show first and then we’ll take it from there. One sicko delusion at a time.

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Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the ‘If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders’ section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.

Joel Embiid has had many different injuries for the Sixers, but this is his first appendicitis. Joel Embiid had surgery on Thursday, just hours before the game against the Rockets. The Sixers will likely be without him for the play in and first round of the playoffs, if they make it. We talk about the situation, and the loss to the Rockets.

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The Sixers continue the battle to escape the play-in, and they’ve been more or less healthy for the first time in a while (knock on wood). That leaves Nick Nurse with a deceptively simple question: Who should be the team’s fifth starter alongside Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, Paul George, and VJ Edgecombe (henceforth the team’s “core four”)?

There are two main options, with both Dominick Barlow and Kelly Oubre Jr. seeing time throughout the year to close out the lineup. And while that might sound like a simple either-or decision on the surface, the reality is a bit messier once you dig into the details.

For starters, injuries have cost us the ability to see these lineups consistently. The most-used Sixers lineup — Barlow with the core four — has just 396 non-garbage time possessions, or roughly four games’ worth of data. The Oubre version is even thinner at 220 possessions, or just over two games. None of the other combinations even clear the 100-possession threshold typically needed for lineup evaluation. For reference, several teams are starting to have lineups with over 1000 possessions. It (almost) makes you feel a little bad for Nick Nurse.

Now that doesn’t mean we can’t evaluate them at all; we just need to be a bit more careful with how we approach the context around the numbers. And even in the minutes that we do have, none of these lineups has been world-beating.

The core four with Barlow sit at a mediocre +1.2 points per 100 possessions, and the core four with Oubre are similarly uninspiring at just +2.5 points per 100 possessions. Those are still better than the overall Sixers squad — who still suffer the ignoble title of having a negative net rating as a prospective playoff team — but are distinctly poor when compared to other five-man units across the NBA.

Unfortunately, while neither option has been particularly impressive, we have to choose one of them. We can’t just trot out the core four and call it a day. So how do we differentiate between the two? It all comes down to tradeoffs and what you’re willing to live with.

To this point in the year, Barlow in the starting lineup has been much stronger defensively than the Oubre lineup, giving up a 112.7 defensive rating in non-garbage time (60th percentile), but not quite as successful on offense, with just a 113.9 offensive rating (32nd percentile).

A lot of that lineup’s defensive success stems from better defensive rebounding — though “better” is just the 39th percentile; it’s still the Sixers, after all — and limiting fouls. They have also been much more effective at keeping teams off the 3-point line and forcing a high volume of midrange looks, perhaps due to Barlow’s switchability.

However, offensively, the Barlow lineup can struggle to make shots. Opponents clog the paint, helping off Barlow’s lack of perimeter shooting — 3 of 18 on threes since the all-star break, and zero since March 15th — which shrinks the space for everyone else. In a playoff setting, where defenses are more deliberate about exploiting weak links, that pressure point is only going to get louder.

On the flip side, Oubre in the starting lineup — which is what Nurse has gone to in the last two games — has been much more impactful offensively, posting a 122.3 offensive rating in their minutes, while struggling more defensively, posting a 119.7 defensive rating.

The key driver of the offensive success has been 3-point shooting, with the Oubre starting lineup hitting 40.8% of their threes. Their halfcourt execution overall also sees a big jump, ranking in the 86th percentile among all 5-man lineups. Stick four shooters around Joel and you’ll have success on offense, who knew!

They lose much of the offensive rebounding volume and putback efficiency that Barlow provides, but when they can space the floor effectively, it cures all offensive ailments. Oubre in particular has been excellent when playing off of the big guy, hitting over 48% of his triples when sharing the floor with Joel overall. There’s some obvious regression risk baked into that number, but there’s also enough shooting around him to soften the drop if it comes.

Defensively, the issues will sound familiar to every Sixers fan who’s watched a game this year: rebounding and transition.

Their defensive rebounding has predictably struggled with Oubre as our fifth, allowing opponents to get back over one in every three misses (12th percentile). However, not only are they giving up a high rate of offensive rebounds, but they are also getting absolutely shredded on second-chance opportunities, sitting in the 0th percentile (a.k.a. the worst five-man lineup in the league) and giving up a 214.3 offensive rating on putbacks. Now obviously, there are some small sample size caveats here where the opponent scoring rate is highly unlikely to stay that high. But without Barlow’s (still just mediocre) defensive rebounding at the 4, this lineup has no way to end possessions.

The same lackadaisical approach extends to transition play, where they are once again defending at the level of the worst five-man lineup in the league (not a phrase I should ever be typing twice in an article).

So where does that leave us? Right back at the tradeoff. Who you want to start comes down to what aspects of the team performance you want to prioritize — offense and shooting with Oubre, or defense and rebounding with Barlow?

My personal opinion is they should start with Barlow, both because our rebounding is so lackluster without him and because of his burgeoning partnership with Joel. But Nurse can rely on the hot hand in each matchup to decide how he wants to close the game.

Regardless of who they choose, the starting five Nurse ultimately plans to go with needs to get consistent minutes as much as possible over the next three games so they can enter the playoffs with some confidence. There’s no perfect answer here, but the Sixers need to decide which version of themselves they trust when it matters.

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