The Sixers have the 22nd pick in the upcoming NBA Draft, and for the life of me, I’m having real trouble giving a shit.

The draft has always been more Mike’s thing than my thing, but to say I didn’t care at all would be untrue. I put real work into the YouTube Big Board, I became invested in my guys, and would at least be able to have some opinion about what the Sixers did.

In a lot of ways, The Ricky was built on the NBA Draft. The Ricky has always on some level been about hope (or the lack of hope), and where is hope more prominent than the Draft and the Lottery? “What’s behind Door No. 3?” is always more exciting than whatever is actually behind Door No. 3.

This year though, I dunno. I’m working through my YouTube scouting but I find myself going blank two minutes into a highlight reel — staring at the screen, but not really seeing anything. Sort of like when you’re reading a book and all of a sudden you realize you have no idea what happened in the three pages that you supposedly just read.

Maybe it’s a lack of hope for the team overall. Maybe it’s what I perceive as the slow degradation of college basketball in general. Maybe it’s the letdown of going from the No. 3 pick last year to the No. 22 pick this year. Maybe it’s because the pick came at the cost of one Jared McCain. Maybe I’m just getting old. But I simply am not getting the joy or rush out of this part of the process (non-proper-noun version) than I did previously.

Maybe I’ll get there by draft night, but I’m saying this now with the expectation that there are some people who feel the same way.

The San Antonio Sixers

I can’t get over how Sixers-y the Spurs choke was in Game 4 of the NBA Finals.

We’ve all seen that Sixers game before. They come out shooting the lights out, and build up a big lead. But we all know what is going to happen…

Eventually, the hot shooting will stop, the team will progressively panic a little bit more every possession and jack up a three just a bit earlier in the clock trying to reclaim the magic that existed earlier in the game.

The clock ticks down at half speed. How are there STILL seven minutes left in this quarter?

The missed free throws from our star player. The why are you doing that?! moment from one of the guards down the stretch (Fox’s attempted layup that got blocked by Anonuby reminded me quite a bit of Maxey not calling timeout against the Knicks). The holding on for dear life, just hoping in vain that the other team runs out of time or chokes a little bit more.

My little prediction here is that the Spurs win Game 5 but Wemby ends up getting himself suspended for Game 6.

Team Ricky

• Beckett’s Draft Guide has begun, and he laid out all of the wings he hopes the Sixers take and the wings he doesn’t hope they take.

• Then Beckett joined us on the Ricky to talk to us about it.

• Giant Knicks fan AU wrote a little lover letter to one of his former Sixer favorites who is thriving in the Finals.

Team Non-Ricky

• Sixers Adam wrote about which other teams might be interested in Quentin Grimes.

• I like the new Olivia Rodrgio album. We’ll be talking about it on The Carl this week.

• The new August Burns Red album is also awesome. I think it might end up being one of my favorite albums they’ve ever released.

  

Subscribe now

The NBA Finals between the Spurs and the Knicks seemed like a lose-lose for me. Either the Knicks and the worst fan base in the NBA wins a title and I have to hear about it for the rest of my natural life (we all will), or the Spurs win the NBA title and everyone who crowned Wemby the Greatest Of All Time before he deserved it would double and triple down on this for the foreseeable future.

As it turns out, just like there is a thin line between love and hate, there is also a thin line between something being a lose-lose and a win-win.

It is admittedly terrible thinking about the Knicks winning the title, which looks incredibly likely now. To be clear, we will never escape this. I despise Knicks fans, but in a lot of ways because I know the type (they are remarkably similar to Eagles fans). Whatever the version of a group of 3,000 Phillies fans going to Citi Field and chanting “E-A-G-L-E-S” during the 6th inning of the game is for Knicks fans, we’re going to find out. It’s going to be worse than you think.

But I also get to watch everyone who crowned Wemby not only the best player in the NBA, but maybe the greatest player of all time before he had won an MVP, or a title, or even became one of the best 20 offensive players in the NBA, have to take a breather for the next six months. Maybe we should wait to see if someone gets obviously outplayed by Karl-Anthony Towns, gets muscled by Landry Shamet or boxed out by Jose Alvarado even though he’s 8 feet tall before they take the crown of current best player, or all-time best player.

Wemby is clearly a great player, and often times terrifying on defense. He is super tall and remarkably skilled and athletic for his height. But his rush up the ranks and more annoyingly, turning everything he does and says into some urban legend or “we just don’t see this stuff in current athletes now” has been irritating and more notably, just wrong. Players dunk all the time, players react emotionally when they win all the time.

You may say I’m being a contrarian (that is part of my personality, I’m not doing it to annoy you), but I’m also right. Sometimes when everyone thinks something at once, it’s wrong.

Just let him earn it. It won’t kill you.

TEAM RICKY

AU wrote a tear-jerker about missing Daryl Morey the online Ricky-adjacent GM (the guy, less so the GM).

We did a Carl Landry Record Club about rapper Mandy Rose and Finley Quaye.

Mike gave three PF/C prospects that the Sixers could take with the #22 pick on the latest Ricky

TEAM NON RICKY

Sixers Adam is guest co-hosting on today’s Ricky..

Subscribe now

With the Sixers out of it (as usual), I have really two choices for the remainder of the NBA playoffs (as usual). Those two choices are either barely pay attention (which I do sometimes), or decide which outcomes will bother me the most (which I’m doing this year).

There usually no positive outcomes once the Sixers are eliminated, only which are the least negative. So with the Knicks already in the Finals, and the the Thunder and Spurs heading to a Game 7, I figured I’d give a little insight into how horrible each of these outcomes could be.

To be clear, these are very personal, I’m not saying these should be your rankings as well. I’ll scale them from 1 (Won’t Bother Me At All) to 10 (Catastrophic).

The Knicks Win the NBA Finals - 10

Knicks fans are currently the worst sports fans in the United States. They first want you to acknowledge them as some sort of a sad sack, “it never works out for us, we’ve been waiting for so long,” dedicated and deserving group, but then immediately insist you bow down the superiority of the team and the City That Never Sleeps. They simultaneously insist that you know that they haven’t won in so long that you should be happy for them, but also celebrate them for winning even though they haven’t won anything yet.

They also live very close to us, will never shut the fuck up, and are generally distasteful.

They’ve also got an insane number of annoying famous fans, who all act like their dream is to be Knicks bloggers or something, just your rag tag bunch of millionaires who date super models and just happen to find themselves courtside. Ben Stiller, Marty Supreme, Turtle from his basement in Ohio, they can all go fuck themselves.

The team themselves don’t particularly bother me, except for Brunson’s weird celebration where he smells his thumb (??)

I know there will be someone who is like “oh duhhhh you’re a Knicks fan!” And I know Mike likes to bring it up with his bullshit little smile that he doesn’t know what he’s doing as well. Dude, I was 16. I’m 49. If we’re all the same at those two ages, I’m happy to page through your old photos as well. I promise you, the fact that I loved John Starks (still do) has very little to do with how much I hate these current fuckers.

We’ll have to resort to reminding them that their team leadership (Rose, Wes) are both Philly guys.

The Spurs Win the NBA Finals - 7

I can’t take the Wemby stuff man. I just can’t do it. In this case, both the fans and the player himself are super irritating.

The group of NBA Twitter dorks who spent three years slobbering over Jokic and insisting his defense was “actually good,” have quietly ignored his recent failures and just moved over to glazing The Alien. Every time the guy dunks we’ve got to act like we’ve never seen a tall person before, and the fact that a person who can dunk without even jumping actually dunked is such a sight to behold.

And Wemby himself, just the fraud of all frauds. Everything about him is a put on. The false competitive Kobe guy Wemby, the thoughtful guy Wemby, the tough guy Wemby, the monk guy Wemby. I just can’t, man. I’m sure there will be a time where he “owns the league” or whatever, but I don’t feel like dealing with Mr. French Ethical Hoops just yet.

Plus, if he really cared about winning, wouldn’t he just learn how to do a sky hook and score 80 points a game?

The Thunder Win the NBA Finals - 1

The Thunder don’t bother me at all. I love Jared McCain. I find SGA actually far more fun to watch than most people seem to, and I don’t think they flop any more than any other team.

Team Ricky

• The Statman (Beckett), wrote how the entirety of the Sixers failures does not rest on Daryl Morey shoulders alone.

• I wrote about all 121 songs that Spotify said are my most listened to songs of all time.

• We’re still doing the podcast.

Team Non-Ricky

• The new Lottery rules are hilarious.

  

Subscribe now

Andrew Unterberger is a Knicks fan.

This was the realization I came to reading his post from earlier this week when he announced that he was cheering for both the Knicks and the Thunder in their respective Conference Finals matchups.

I know this is rich from me considering that in my teens I was an actual Knicks fan, but maybe it takes one to know one. I can assure you that there is not a team or a fanbase that I hate more than the Knicks and their aura farming mouth breathing fans at the moment.

In any case, back to Andrew “Spike Lee” Unterberger. I think he’s an excellent writer. I’m truly honored that he’s such a big part of the Ricky. One of the reasons i know he’s a good writer is that regularly I yell at what he’s written out loud as I’m reading it. This week, I didn’t get past the subject line before gasping.

I am aware it is possible to have a rooting interesting in a series once the Sixers are eliminated. I’m also aware that this could be for a rival, for one reason or another. But I sniffed out more than that with AU. I sniffed out actual fandom, likely due to proximity for an extended period of time.

This happens of course, quite often. There is no doubt that while Mike is primarily a Phillies fan, he is secondarily a Dodgers fan. This is not just in a “makes his wife happy” way, it’s in a real way. I suspect he feels the same way about the Lakers. He may deny this, but you talk to someone about sports for three hours a week for 13 years and you figure some things out. I am not criticizing Mike for this… it happens. He’s been out there for a decade and a half, the Dodgers and the Lakers aren’t like, natural rivals to our teams, and it just kinda happened. As well, I’d say my three years working in New York made me kind of a Yankees fan. We run the Yankees Radio Network up there, they’re not natural Phillies rivals, etc, etc…

This has happened to AU with the Knicks, though he probably won’t admit it. There are a couple key lines in his post that give this way.

I can’t even feel the same as Spike about their fans — most of the Knicks fans I know are actually pretty cool.

LOL, are they? I am not sure how many links I should share here of Knicks fans being decidingly uncool, but we’d probably need to build an entire data center to house them. I’m sure AU did stand next to two unassuming ones for two and a half hours one time, but to say they’re “pretty cool” in light of the evidence to the contrary is honestly Stockholm Syndrome stuff.

Most importantly, I need them to embarrass the fucking Cavs. The fact that the Cavs, that Donovan Mitchell, made a conference finals before us has been maybe the toughest part of these whole playoffs for me.

Ah yes, our long-standing war with Donovan Mitchell must be held sacred. I mean, he did wear a t-shirt making fun of Ben Simmons once, and we all know we’re very dedicated to defending Simmo the Savage’s honor. Not to mention, was Mitchell totally wrong? Aside from that, I can’t think of one moment where we’d have any issue with him.

What has happened here is AU has lived in New York for too long and has a soft spot for the Knicks. It disgusts me but it’s understandable. I just wish he’d admit it.

All that said, I do feel good about AU’s support of the Thunder largely being about telling everyone to fucking relax with Wemby. Let him earn it. He’s 8 feet tall, he runs like a gazelle, it’s possible he ends up the best player of all time. He should probably make the Finals first though. The Thunder won the title last year, had the best record in the league this year, were 8-0 in the playoffs until that point, and had played six of those games without their second best player. They lost one game in double overtime after a week-long break, and immediately their entire run was being extinguished so we could slurp up Wemby. Relax!

Team Ricky

• We did a deep dive on Bob Myers with Ethan-Sherwood Strauss (who covered him for years) and Saam Esfandiari (who has podcasted about him for years).

• Here’s AU’s fucking piece of shit column.

Team Non-Ricky

• Marcus Hayes has some sources that pretty unsurprisingly say that Josh Harris badly wants Bob Myers to run the Sixers and Bob Myers badly doesn’t want to do it.

• Tony Jones says that Jameer Nelson is the real only internal candidate for the POBO job and gives us some other names as well.

• A new Sixers Adam Mock Draft roundup on what the Sixers might do with the 22nd pick.

Subscribe now

I had one primary thought after listening to Josh Harris and Bob Myers blather on for an hour yesterday…

“Ah, so are we doing this again?”

Yes there were the normal lies (Josh Harris on the luxury tax), avoiding answers that committed to anything, talk of how badly everyone wants to win, but that wasn’t really what I took away from everything.

My big question is this – Is Bob Myers shadow running everything or is he up there trying to make Josh Harris think he’s going to shadow run it so he gets to keep his job doing very little and getting paid a lot?

For all of the criticisms lobbed at the Harris/Bltizer era, the one that is most troubling and harmful is their inability to commit and stick to an organized leadership structure for any reasonable amount of time.

Since purchasing the Sixers in 2011, we’ve had the following clusterfucks: when Doug Collins, Rod Thorn, Tony DiLeo and Adam Aron all thought they ran the team. When Sam Hinkie ran the team but Scott O’Neil thought he ran the team. There was very little confusion when Colangelo was here, he was a disaster all on his own. Then, instead of actually choosing a leader, when Elton Brand was named GM, it was actually them not able to choose any of the internal candidates, so letting them all run the team while Brand was the face of it.

Almost every person in the front office during the Brand era had a direct line to Harris, but the most destructive of which was Colangelo right-hand-man Alex Rucker, who when he wasn’t trying to manipulate fan sentiment by emailing bloggers and podcasters and high-ranking social influencers, was doing the same with Harris. Then, the Sixers allowed Brand to rid the front office of those folks to put him really in charge, for a couple of weeks before they hired Doc Rivers and gave him some say in personnel. Then they hired Daryl Morey with Doc Rivers already in place.

So that brings us to today and Bob Myers. Myers certainly made it a point to sound like he would be part of the day to day operations with the Sixers. This is for one of two reasons.

1. He’s actually going to be part of this, without question shrinking the pool of candidates who are going to have their names attached to the success or failure of the next few years. There are definitely fewer people who will want the job if they think that Myers is the guy really doing the job. This already coming from probably a smaller pool due to the challenging circumstances and the fact that this person cannot hire their own head coach, at least for the first year.

2. Josh Harris, who previously tried to hire Myers away from the Warriors, asked Myers to do it. Myers doesn’t want to do it because his current job pays more money, is less work, and is more in line with what he wants to do in the future. However, Myers wants to keep this cushy job where he has one or two main projects a year along with answering a couple of Harris calls a week. So he tells Harris, “don’t worry, I’ll keep a close eye on it,” and was putting on show during the press conference.

Neither one of these options are good, and both of them are pretty in line with the bullshit we’ve seen over the years.

This isn’t a condemnation of Myers’ ability to do the job if that was what happened. He’s got his hits and misses just like everyone in those positions does. You can find people who think he was carried in his time with the Warriors, and people who rightly point to the fact that they won four titles while he was in charge (that’s the only argument I need Shawn!). I don’t really have an opinion on Bob Myers, only that if he’s the one doing the job he should just do the job.

Finally a related note on Elton Brand. There seems to be a group of vocal people (perhaps just a small group, I don’t know), who are insistent that Brand also be let go. I think there are some misperceptions about Brand.

First, you simply cannot hold the things you hold against him, against him in the way that you do. The internal dynamics of when he was “in charge” were untenable, and it was more like a GM by committee (with the aforementioned Rucker) really doing things. That’s no way to run a team. Brand was certainly green and probably had the position early, but it just was not him going around making those calls.

Since then, Brand has been an asset and it’s almost impossible to find someone who has worked with him or around him to say a bad word about him. He’s well thought of and had a ton of opportunities to work elsewhere that he has passed up to stay with the Sixers. I am not saying he should get Morey’s job, but I am saying that the Sixers are probably better off overall if he stays. They’re certainly not worse off.

At the very least, when someone like Morey is let go, it’s rare that his entire staff is let go before a new hire is made. As Myers mentioned, the Sixers still have to run a team between now and when the new person is hired, with the draft right around the corner. If they were to move on from Brand, it would be almost assured this would happen after the new person is hired.

Team Ricky

• Our Daryl Is Gone pod.

• The Statman reminds us that we should have all seen this coming from a mile away.

• AU is still delusional.

• My (non basketball related) Daryl Morey farewell.

Team Non-Ricky

• This one is dedicated to Sixers Adam, who had the scoop and story of the off-season so far.

Subscribe now

Daryl Morey is out as President Of Basketball Operations for the Philadelphia 76ers, as you may have heard. Nick Nurse is remaining the head coach, as you also may have heard.

Mike is busy coaching tonight (cue Coach Mike song), so we’ll be live tomorrow night at 8pm to discuss all of it.

I remember a surreal moment in October of 2020, when I was on the air at 94WIP, arguing with Billy King about the Sixers hire of Doc Rivers. I told Billy that the hiring of Rivers didn’t mean anything to me, I wanted them to go out and hire Daryl Morey.

It is rarely the case in Sixers Land, but I got exactly what I wanted. The Sixers hired Morey. He really shoved it up my ass with the Jared McCain trade, didn’t he?

We first had Daryl on the Ricky when was running the Rockets, and he was stuck in The Bubble in Disney World. I truly don’t even remember how it happened. I’ve never listened to it. I don’t even know what we talked about.

Since then, he’s been on the Ricky like ten times, regardless of whether we were ripping him or praising him. He was always very fair to us, even if we were tormenting him. He recognized how die-hard Ricky listeners are, and I know always appreciated the opportunity to talk directly to you.

The guy running the Sixers let us replay his hug with James Harden with him over and over again while demanding he analyze whether he wanted the hug more than Harden did.

I will save my takes about the move and his tenure for the podcast (I have many of these. But I will say here I think he is good at his job, has always been generous with his time and otherwise with us, and I am glad he had the job.

It didn’t end up with a championship, or the Finals, or past the second round, but we did finally beat a good team in the playoffs.

We’ll get him on with us eventually so I can yell at him about Jared McCain. He owes us that at least.

I am stuck today.

I am caught in the middle of two things I want to tell you. And I don’t feel right telling you one thing without including the other.

If I just told you one of the things, you’d think I was a delusional homer, caught up in the excitement of the playoff run, once again convincing myself of something insane.

If I just told you the other thing, you’d think “there goes angry Spike again, stuck on something that doesn’t matter anymore instead of just enjoying the moment.”

So instead of going deep on either of these things, I’ll just tell you both all at once.

I feel pretty good about where the Sixers are in this series, so much so that I bet on them to win the series, but also, I am furious that the Sixers only have 1.5 playable guards and wings off the bench while Jared McCain is scoring 18 points in 18 minutes for the world champion Thunder.

(quick note here: I was going to use a couple of dashes after “all at once” before I said the sentence, but I’m terrified to use those now because people always assume that AI wrote it if you do that. This is not AI, it’s me.)

To expound on the first part – there were a few things that happened in Game 2 that made me feel pretty comfortable moving forward. First, the defense looked again like the defense from the Celtics series, that is to say, pretty suffocating. Brunson ended up hitting some big shots at the end but generally looked pretty frustrated and stifled all game. They weren’t just walking into open shots, they did have to work for everything (special shout out to VJ for the job he did on Brunson). Second, they found an option with Dominick Barlow at center. I don’t think this is something they can do often, and to be honest it might not even work against either of the Knicks primary centers, but it’s nice to know that it’s there. Third, OG Anunoby got hurt. I am not celebrating an injury, that’s bad karma, I’m just being honest. He’s pretty important for them. Obviously McBride will proceed to go 6-8 from three, but Anunoby’s size and defense makes a big difference there.

Speaking of Anunoby, here is my guess of who is playing that was on yesterday’s injury report:

Embiid (Questionable) - playing
Hart (Questionable) - playing

Anunoby (Questionable) - not playing

Robinson (Probable) - playing

And look, if the oddsmakers were right, the Sixers would not have beaten the Celtics, so take this with a grain of salt, but it’s pretty interesting to me that the Sixers are 1.5 favorites at Draft Kings for Game 3. The Sixers have not been favored in any playoff game this year, and it hasn’t even been close. The Knicks were 6.5 point favorites in Game 1 and 10.5 point favorites in Game 2.

Now to the second part – I just can’t believe that Daryl told everyone at the deadline that he thought this Sixers team could make a deep playoff run, and chose to go into the playoffs with their only bench options as guards or wings being Quentin Grimes and Justin Edwards, one of whom Nurse does not like playing at all even though he praises him at every turn. I’m sure he’d bring up Cam Payne at this point (who suffered an injury and was cut), but thinking that your second bench guard (and only bench point guard) is a guy you signed off the street who was playing in Serbia is a pretty bold choice.

Meanwhile, over in the Western Conference, last year’s NBA champions, the Oklahoma City Thunder, the deepest team in the league, is somehow finding a way to get Jared McCain on the court. McCain had 18 points in 18 minutes in Game 2 against the Lakers, and 12 points in 15 minutes in Game 1 against the Lakers. Both victories. The Sixers entire bench in Game 2 against the Knicks had 15 points in 56 minutes.

McCain was on the floor for the deciding run on Thursday night while SGA was on the bench with four fouls. This quote from Chet Holmgren really stings:

“Every time I see him shoot, I think it’s going in. I know it’s going up at this point, as it should. If you get those shots off and make them at that type of clip, it’s probably the best play for us. So, credit to him, he’s got just a certain type of confidence in him to come in the game cold after a lot of time sitting long stretches and then just bomb and make shots.”

Would he have been the key to winning an NBA championship? Of course not. Would he provided a playable guard to give up 10-15 minutes off the bench to spell Maxey, and potentially catch a little fire from three? Of course he would have.

What the fuck? Honestly man.

Team Ricky

• The Statman wrote about the keys to a Sixers victory over the Knicks after the drubbing in Game 1, and with Embiid likely returning in Game 3, I think it’s still prescient.

• Our friends at Shibe Vintage Sports are having a huge sale on Sixers stuff right now.

• AU wrote a bunch about Game 7.

Team Non Ricky

• Man this video of Tobias Harris getting crossed over so bad he fell down is really ruined by this other video showing that Donovan Mitchell actually grabbed his leg.

• I can’t believe James Harden had such a bad performance in a big playoff game!

Subscribe now

Quick note before you read this: I was going through Ricky emails and I became inspired to write the following post. I didn’t know if anyone else was writing anything, I just knew I needed to write it. I then sent a text to Ricky Editor In Chief Andrew Unterberger, and this is the exchange, and the reason you’re getting two posts from two people essentially saying the same thing but unaware that the other was going to say it.

And with that, here is my original post, reluctantly edited and posted by AU.

“It’s OK to lose, just don’t embarrass us,” was the theme of the end of the podcast that Mike and I did on Thursday night.

That’s been pretty much the theme the entire series, as evidenced by how furious we were with the 30 point losses (embarrassing), and relatively unbothered by the six point loss (not embarrassing).

When we were finishing up and discussing whether the Sixers would win Game Seven, we both settled into that comfortable spot we had spend the entire postseason. “Just don’t make us have to defend you in public,” is essentially what we’re saying. But as I said it, I could tell that I really didn’t believe it, I was just too scared to express it publicly.

They have to win tonight. They just do. They can’t come this far and lose. I do believe they will win. I am full-on dumb-fuck bought in. I can’t believe it. I haven’t believed in the Sixers in literally years. But they have to win tonight and I think they will.

“Just don’t embarrass us” originates from two basic feelings. First, neither of us believed they could win the series. I am not ashamed of thinking this. It was reasonable. It’s also funny that we both believed it. As the podcast goes on, Mike is thinking more like me (he’d disagree which is fine but it’s true) and I’m thinking even more like me, so we do occasionally agree on things. It’s probably when we’re the most wrong, as well. The second feeling this thinking comes from is an unwillingness to believe, given all of the times we’ve been punished for doing so.

We have many memories of the last thirteen years of Process basketball and podcasts. Some of them are good, but most of are bad, or at best, weird (and also bad).

Bad: collapse against the Celtics, choke against the Heat, sweep by the Celtics in the bubble, the Kawhi shot, the Ben Simmons turned-down dunk against the Hawks, the various injuries, Zhaire Smith almost dying, Scott O’Neil, the entire 24-25 season, etc, etc…

Bad but Also Weird: Markelle Fultz forgetting how to shoot, Simmons never learning how to shoot, the Bryan Colangelo burners, Hinkie’s manifesto, the minority owner who claimed to be running the team with Brett Brown and then leaving several years later, New Philadelphia, etc, etc…

We deserve one real moment of pure basketball joy. The best moment of the era simply cannot be Joel Embiid watching TV to learn that he won the MVP. Having one of the consensus top five players in basketball for a decade can not be highlighted by that guy watching TV in some random room somewhere. It has to be on the court.

People will call us losers for celebrating the way we will celebrate if the Sixers win tonight, but I don’t particularly care. They have not beaten a good team in the playoffs during the Process era, and beating the largely consensus best team in the Easter Conference, after being down 3-1, when Joel Embiid misses the first three games, opening as a -900 underdog, and that team being the Celtics, who the Sixers haven’t beaten in 42 years, is a big fucking deal. It just is.

Not to mention, they deserve it. And when I say “they,” I mostly just mean Joel Embiid. Tyrese Maxey for sure deserves it, but he will get other chances. Same for VJ Edgecombe. I will feel good for Oubre of course. Paul George, I dunno, I’m glad he’s playing well but “deserves it” would be a reach. Embiid is the only person on the team, or front office who has been through all of this with us. I would like for him to get this moment as well.

If they win tonight, I would recommend you do not jump immediately to “there’s no one in the East we can’t beat.” Give yourself the chance to enjoy something for once. If I can do it, I am pretty sure you can.

Now go fucking beat them.

Subscribe now

This Sixers series against the Celtics is the single most shocked I’ve been by anything that has happened during the Process Era. I am trying to figure out what emotion I can express to you the morning after Game 6, and all I keep saying to myself is “I can’t believe this is happening.”

I am obviously elated, and still kind of anxious (as they still have to win one more game), but the number one thing I am is shocked.

Markelle Fultz forgetting how to shoot was less surprising. Bryan Colangelo’s burners? Easier to predict. Zhaire Smith almost dying because of a food allergy he didn’t know he had from food that the Sixers served him? Well, if you look at the odds, there are a lot of food allergies out there and a Sixer was bound to have one of them.

Something happened prior to the 4th quarter of game five that turned the team into the ideal version of themselves. The way they’ve defended for the last game and a quarter is just not something I believed they could do. They went from a team that gave up more open threes than any team I’ve ever watched in my adult life to being able to prevent the Boston Celtics, a team that is built around getting open threes, from getting any of them.

There were no signs pointing to this happening prior to this series starting.

(Before I continue, I know you could be reading this saying out loud, “I knew they were going to win!” I am happy for you. I believe you thought they were going to win. If we’re all being honest with ourselves you’ve said this every time.)

The numbers didn’t say it could happen. The Celtics were one of the best teams in the league on offense and defense all year long. The Sixers were, even with Joel and PG on the court, pretty uninspiring.

The vibes certainly weren’t pointing to it. The Celtics went into the playoffs with a “we can win even sitting all of our best players” victory over the Magic, while the Sixers fumbled themselves into the play-in, and their best player had an emergency appendicitis.

History was not on our side. The Sixers haven’t beaten the Celtics in a playoff series since Ronald Reagan’s first term in office. And once the playoffs began, once the Celtics went up 3-1, 95.6 of those teams win the series. The Sixers have never won a playoff series after going down 3-1.

Mike predicted a sweep. AU was writing missives about how sad we all are just a few days ago. The Stat Man was like “better pray!” None of us saw this coming.

And yet, here the Sixers are, on the verge of the first good playoff series win since we’ve been doing the Ricky.

A lot of times people say, “I’d be happy to be wrong but…” right before they say they think something bad is going to happen. Every time I laughed at the idea of the Sixers winning this series, I would say that.

Needless to say, very wrong. Very happy. Go win Game 7.

Team Ricky

• Most of the content we’ve produced over the last week is really not that timely to be consuming now, to be honest.

• Here’s last night’s Ricky. It’s a good one. There is an NSFW part toward the end where I suggest Nick Nurse might show up on my doorstep and play a guitar solo with his dick so be careful there.

• Beckett, the Stat Man, wrote about how the SIxers could win Game 6. I suppose all of this holds for Game 7.

• The new album from The Fray is my favorite album of 2026 so far. It’s really incredible. We did an episode of The Carl Landry Record Club about it. If you want to suggest an album for the podcast, do it here.

Team Non-Ricky

• Kelly Oubre is a gift. Speaking of surprising, never thought he would become what he is. May he never sign anywhere else (unless it’s a record deal).

• KOC with some kind words about Maxey.

• I don’t really have anything else. The Sixers forced a Game 7 with the Celtics. The Flyers are not only in the playoffs but are “the hot young team nobody wants to face with the hot goalie.” The Phillies are now undefeated with Donnie Baseball signing the lineup cards (shout out SixersAdam). Soak it in, baby.

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Subscribe now

Well, God willing, these assholes are going to be in the playoffs again, so us assholes have to do our part.

Our part, is as always, convincing ourselves that the Sixers will have a chance to beat any of the teams they play in the first round. I, one of the head assholes, am here to help you do that.

I’m going to skip over all of the convincing you’ll have to do about the Sixers themselves. We know what those steps are (fresh legs, nobody there to guard Embiid, etc…). What I’m going to present to you here is how to convince yourself that the Sixers can beat any of the top four seeds in the Eastern Conference that they may play.

Detroit Pistons

This one’s pretty easy! First of all, we have the “they might not have Cade Cunningham” to lean on until proven otherwise. I will chose to believe that he’s not going to play.

From there it gets pretty easy. There is simply no way you’ll convince me that the Sixers are going to lose to a team who is starting Tobias Harris against us. The world is often times cruel, but not cruel enough to let us lose to a guy who scored zero points in his playoff finale against us. If it were a “carrying books into the locker room” contest, we may lose, but not basketball.

Boston Celtics

Are you kidding me? The Celtics are a tinderbox just waiting for someone to throw a match.

They were cruising along as the feel good story of the season as they looked great without Jayson Tatum, thanks to greatest coach of all time Joe Mazzulla. Tatum came back, and they’ve admittedly been very good since then. However, we all know they’re one playoff loss away from some Jaylen Brown subtweet or postgame comment that suggests they were better before Tatum came back. From there, it’s smooth sailing for our Sixers.

New York Knicks

Since I used to work in New York, with a lot of Knicks fans, I do get to see a lot of their chatter online. Let me tell you this loud and clear — if there’s any fanbase who thinks their team sucks more than we do, it’s Knicks fans.

They’ve benched KAT a few times down the stretch and it doesn’t seem like the other players respect him very much. Josh Hart has some comment once a month about what’s wrong with the team. And let’s be honest, Jalen Brunson is a guy but he’s not THAT guy. Does he hit clutch shots? Yes. Is he tough and not afraid of the moment? Also yes. But he’s just not good enough to dribble the air out of the ball as much as he does.

Cleveland Cavaliers

Going against James Harden in a playoff series? In this economy? Say no more.

Team Ricky

• Beckett took a look at which Sixers players will benefit most from the return of Joel Embiid and Paul George.

• Although I did a pretty good job of talking myself into things at the start of this post, nobody talks themselves into stuff like AU does.

• We had Sixers Adam on the Ricky this week and just tortured him the entire time.

Non-Team Ricky

• Truly, what is Evan Turner’s problem?

• Finally – has anyone been on the injury report for an illness more than Joel Embiid over the last five or six years? Could someone do that research for me?

Subscribe now

I’d like to explain why I yelled at AU on the podcast the other night. I know sometimes people think I make the content of the podcast about the podcast too much. But I also know that so many of the true Ricky people both A) love this stuff but B) really don’t need another opinion from me about Jared McCain or how I don’t think the Sixers are going to win anything this year.

Mike and I really don’t argue anymore, so it’s probably been a while since the pod has had one of these moments. We disagree, but much like any two people who have managed to get along for this long, you figure out how to avoid serious conflict. We’re both also older and much more tired. We have our rhythm.

I know AU quite well (maybe not as well as you’d think I know him, but I know him well), but we don’t podcast together a lot, so I certainly wouldn’t be quite as apt as seeing the ship heading for the iceberg.

Ok, let’s pull back the curtain, why it happened. It wasn’t because I massively disagreed or cared very much that AU thought the Sixers win over the Bulls was the biggest win of the season. I didn’t disagree all that passionately (though he’s clearly wrong). I think it probably came off like I got mad because he thought the Sixers were great at that moment (they’re not) and I thought they weren’t. I wasn’t trying to like, crush his dreams.

I got mad at AU at the moment because I did not know how we were going to talk about the game and do the podcast. I know this seems like a way too Xs and Os way to think about things, but it’s very difficult to debate how you feel about something, and much easier to debate what you think is happening/should happen. So we were 5 minutes into a segment of the pod that should take 20-25 minutes, and the core disagreement is that AU thinks it was huge and I don’t.

So when I’m yelling “go ahead and talk about it Buddy Boy,” I’m frustrated because I’m trying to convey that it’s not really a topic we can discuss. It just is or isn’t. I’m sitting not knowing whether to keep talking about the game or move on and go to the next topic. And then his mic didn’t sound how we wanted it (it’s my fault for not supplying him with the right one), and I had already spent four hours arguing about sports at my day job.

So, Spike the Host Who Needs Everything to Be Right threw a temper tantrum, that in the end was sorta funny but probably uncalled for, and that’s why I said “sorry AU,” and we moved on.

These Dogs Are Homeless and Only You Can Save Them

Please? My goal is to raise $800 more dollars by Sunday night to get me to $6,000.

Team Ricky

• Against all odds, Paul George is back and Joel Embiid is back at the same time. MOC wrote about both of their returns, and how he doesn’t generally trust PG and wonders why people get so mad discussing Joel Embiid. He also snuck in a Markelle Fultz segment, and I’m going to have to talk to him about that because we’re supposed to pretend like it never happened.

• If you happen to be a fan of Alkaline Trio, me and Mutlu did a podcast about Matt Skiba’s old side project Heavens, and talked a little bit about the new song from Joji on the Carl Landry Record Club.

• Wow, looks like Team Ricky has been mostly quiet this week. Maybe AU should be fighting with me less and getting on everyone’s ass a little more.

Non Team Ricky

• Where is Keith Pompey?

• Former Ricky guy Sixers Adam caught up with Zhaire Smith about his weird time with the Sixers.

• What is it with Phillies players and their family members stealing their money?

Subscribe now

I am not trying to cope about the Sixers trading away Jared McCain, I am truly living with the grief (anger).

Every time he has a good game, as I will do for the next decade, I tweet something about how good it was and say something sarcastic about how the Sixers couldn’t possibly have found minutes for him. After he led the Thunder in scoring (again) in a win (again), you have examples here, here, and here. As I’ve said before, I’m never going to let this go.

When I send out these posts, there are several coping responses I get, and all of them are bullshit. There is however, one coping response that nobody has sent me, that is not bullshit, and would be the one thing that could possibly save this for GM Spreadsheet and Rock N’ Roll Coach. Before we get to that though, some of the bullshit:

1. “He only does this in garbage time against bad teams!” - BULLSHIT! Sorry, this is bullshit. Did he score 26 against the Nets and lead the team in scoring in a win again? Yes. Do the Nets suck? Yes. But he also played well and hit big shots in crunch time against the Nuggets and Timberwolves. Also, for what it’s worth, we barely beat the Nets! We could have used him.

2. “He’s not going to play during the playoffs for them!” - BULLSHIT! First of all, I’m not sure about that. Second of all, I don’t give a shit! They’re the deepest team in the league, so what? During a game this week our backcourt was Cam Payne and Kyle Lowry. What the fuck! No disrespect to either of those guys, love ‘em both, but one of them didn’t think he’d even be playing this year and is playing with a spare tire around his waist, and the other guy was literally in Serbia a month ago.

3. “He’s too small and doesn’t play defense!” - BULLSHIT! Is he some longer super-athlete who is going to win Defensive Player of The Year? No. He’s also not Muggsy Bogues. He’s 6’2”, he’s got a strong lower half, he’s smart, he works hard and he’s got good hands. I’m not saying he needed to start next to Tyrese Maxey; I’m thrilled with Edgecombe being that guy. But if you’re doubting that McCain’s defense can’t get to a spot where he can play real minutes on a contender, you would be wrong to do so, as he’s doing it now.

Here’s the one nobody says to me that might be the only coping mechanism that might work: “The Rockets are only three games out of the play-in and we have their pick.” Now you’re cooking with a little bit of gas.

When we first got the Rockets pick, we all assumed it would be in the mid-20s. It may very well be. But the Rockets are certainly not a team that seems particularly stable, has been leaking a little bit of oil — and what if they leaked a little too much oil, fell into the play-in, and lost? There’s not what I’d call a large chance of that happening. It’s not even a coin flip. It’s probably below a puncher’s chance. But it’s possible, and whatever percentage it is, it could be the only chance our friends Dr. Data and Coach Jamz have of escaping being tormented by us forever for this trade.

Begging

Still raising money for homeless dogs and cats here. Many people have been incredibly generous. The list is too long for me to write out. But we’re still like $3,000 out of the top spot and when we raise money for stuff I always want us to be the best at it.

Team Ricky

• I, personally, have not cared about the NCAA Tournament in many, many years. As an aside, it did actually used to be much better, the teams were much better, and this not just some Gen X cope. It might be fine now, but it used to be much better. In any case… Since the Sixers have a pick (hey maybe two!) in this year’s draft, Beckett wrote a good piece about the players in the tournament for you to keep an eye on from a Sixers perspective.

• AU will eventually have his day in Ricky court to defend this anti-tanking post he wrote earlier this week. Mike and I hardly ever agree, but when we do it’s when we want to yell at AU for something. The best thing about this piece is you can feel how much AU feels it in the piece, he knew he had to write it.

Team Non-Ricky

• I am actually watching last night’s Sixers win over the Kings as I write this, and Justin Edwards is draining bucket after bucket. Mike and I generally disagree on Edwards (I truly believe this is a case of Mike being locked into his pre-draft assessment of Edwards). Sixers Adam wrote a good little ditty about the game Edwards had.

• Just a solid post from our guy Kelly Oubre of photos of him.

• I really can’t believe the NBA is going to expand and add two more teams while a third of the league, literally a third of the league is so bad that they’re trying to lose to get better players. It really seems like current NBA owners are trying to cash every check before their world starts crumbling in about seven years. The streaming deals were very nice but they’ll never happen again, a few of them have already sold, and now they want to add two more teams so they can get an easy check from the two new ownership groups. The NBA does not need two more teams! Move the Pelicans, move the Clippers or something, they do not need two more teams.

Subscribe now

It first came up a few podcasts ago, when Mike mentioned something about not making the playoffs, and I mentioned to him that in that case, we get to do another Lottery Party.

Then it really hit me during the Cavs game, when the Sixers were getting smoked.

It would be better if the Sixers didn’t make the playoffs, and had a chance at their pick, which they do not get unless it’s in the top four (otherwise the Thunder get it – cute, I know). Getting this year’s pick actually even saves the Sixers from having to give Brooklyn a first round pick, as Sixers Adam laid out for us.

But this is an entirely different situation than last year. I want us all on the same page. Last year we wanted to happen. This year is, “We’ll be ok if this is how it happens to work out, especially because it seems like it’s going to work out like this anyway.” We gotta play this cool.

Unfortunately we’re too deep into this to be rooting for losses and ping pong balls in front of everyone again. Last season was like alumni weekend at college, everyone knew why we were there so they let us have our fun as long as we’d leave on Sunday, or at the very latest Monday morning. Rooting for it again this year would be like if we came back again the following weekend.

(I would never go to an alumni weekend for college, I wrote it this way to seem more relatable. My actual version of this would be to go see, let’s say Yungblud once, be the oldest guy there, and have it be amusing to everyone until I showed up again the next time.)

So the “get the pick thing” just has to be in the back of your brain for the next couple of months. We’ll all do the “let’s see if they can get back to the six seed” thing, the play-in matchup thing, even the “if we’re healthy we can beat anyone thing” once the playoffs start (if they start).

Rooting for the pick is really the war on the zugwang. The zugzwang says nothing can happen that will put us in a better situation than we were before. The pick is its kryptonite.

Animals Again

Take a walk through animal shelter kennels just one time, and you’ll never stop thinking about getting those poor dogs and cats a place they can call home. I even slept in one of them one night with a dog, and I’ve never been able to shake it.

So even though I feel like I ask for donations for animal shelters a lot, I will never stop. This time I’m raising money with a local high school student named Alex for the Brandywine Valley SPCA’s Walk For Paws. Our goal is $6,000, and we’re about $1900 away. But to be honest, the real goal is to be the top fundraiser, and we’re about $5,000 from the lead. If you have it in your wallet and heart to donate, do it here.

Team Ricky

The Carl Landry Record Club is the music podcast I do with Mutlu that began with me and Mike reviewing albums during Covid. Believe it or not, The Carl is almost at 200 episodes and 400 albums talked about. This week we talked about a forgotten nu-metal era album from Boy Hits Car and a cool new song from Yumi Zuoma.

Speaking of music, this isn’t Team Ricky but I don’t know where to put it. We talked about a band called Jane a few times on The Carl. I love them. They have a new project called Yardsale that came out this week that you might enjoy. It’s five fun songs that all sound like they’d work as theme songs from a 90s sitcom.

It’s linked in what I wrote before, but MOC’s post about the Sixers being in the dreaded Zugzwang is a good read, though sort of depressing one. It’s worth reading and trying to figure out how he might be wrong, just so you can find a reason to keep watching the games at all.

Through just half of one season with The Ricky, Beckett is already like “how do you guys talk about the Sixers this much,” so he took a break. He didn’t write about food or the Phillies, but he did give the reasons why every single one of the NBA’s ideas to fix tanking will not work.

It’s funny, as it seems like this moment that AU wrote about may have passed so quickly for us and the Sixers that we never noticed. We went right from “oh no this is terrible” to “maybe they’ll get the pick” with lightning quickness. Still, a very adept observation from The Gold Man.

Team Everyone Else

Sixers Adam’s look at the tanking situation is a must-read (just if someone sees you reading it be like “these losers want to lose again LOL” but then privately be like “Adam write updates about this weekly.”)

I saw Robert Covington popping up everywhere and wondered why, and found out there’s a documentary about him that PBS produced. Here’s a link to the story, and I’ll watch it this weekend and let you know how it is.

Shout out Matt Cord for a great run.

Subscribe now

It’s been so many years since we started this that it would be easy to miss the irony of the situation that the Sixers are in, and thus, we are in.

As usual, I am here to remind you of the bad stuff that you’d like to file away in the back of your brain.

The reason you’re having such a hard time trying to calculate how you feel about this year’s Sixers is because they’re in the spot that we most dreaded at the start of this entire thing in 2013. The Sixers are in the middle. They are not good enough to win a championship, and they are not bad enough to get a high draft pick. And while they do have promising young players, they are not in a position where we believe that the first of those two situations is coming any time soon. The Atlanta Hawks were always the example we used, but now it’s us.

And you can see why those Sixers teams of the pre-Process era were so easy for people to check out on. It’s difficult to really inspire any real emotion out of you. It’s hard to get that excited because even when they play well, you know ultimately they don’t have much of a chance, so the feeling is fleeting. It’s hard to be that mad at them, because you already knew who they were anyway. Most normal folks (unlike all of us) just sort of turn a blind eye and move to a more healthy and sane “let me know if any of this changes” stance for the team.

I’m sure there are some people who can watch them lose and turn it off and just go to bed without thinking twice, or watch them win a game they shouldn’t and be excited it happened without worrying about whether it means they can win in the playoffs. Unfortunately I am not one of those people.

I do think that’s why everyone has gotten mad and rallied around the Jared McCain trade issue. It’s the first time in a long time we’ve all been really excited or mad about something at the same time, and it’s good just to feel anything at all aside from the dread at looking at the cloudy road ahead of us.

The scary part is that when you look ahead to this summer after our inevitable playoff exit, it’s hard to imagine anything significantly changing before next season. Joel will still be some version of this Joel, impressive in spurts but not truly playing enough to believe in the team, and with too many years on his contract remaining to imagine anything different. Maxey will probably find a way to get better as he usually does, but probably not by a measure that would change the ultimate outcome of the team. Edgecombe will improve, but still, enough to change the overall outlook right away? It seems doubtful. Maybe Morey will find a creative way to move on from Paul George and it’ll give an injection of life.

The middle sucks as much as we thought it did.

Team Ricky

We had a three-man pod on Wednesday night after the just atrocious Jazz game, with AU as the third wheel, and I thought it was a lot of fun. We haven’t done this much on the pod, but it seemed like the perfect antidote to a game that was almost impossible to talk about.

An absolutely great look at how Tyrese Maxey has evolved this season and how exactly he raises the floor of the team during a season where it’s been difficult to figure that out from the great Mike O’Connor.

Other Stuff

Friend of the pod Mike Su developed this website that will email you every time the Sixers play, and tell you after the game whether it’s worth watching or not. When you enter your email just make sure you click on the confirmation link email it sends you (they do this so people don’t sign their friends up). It’s good for when you record the game but don’t know whether the game is worth your time. Another Ricky listener developed this one that does it for the rest of the league as well.

Friend of the pod Kevin O’Connor wrote this great piece about how the Sixers fucked up the Jared McCain situation.

Jake Fischer actually talked to Jared McCain about the trade and wrote this about how he’s adjusting in OKC.

We heard from Ricky listener Ethan, who is fostering this great dog (see below) named Brick. They’re fostering from ACCT, who really needs all the help they can get. They can only continue to foster Brick for another month until they move, so they’re exhausting all avenues to try and find him a home.

Ethan says that Brick was a stray, and has even done well in their quiet one bedroom apartment. He is potty trained and crate trained, sleeps through the night, love to play and cuddle, and has been a great roommate to Ethan and his girlfriend. He can get a little scared on noisy walks, but nothing too much to worry about. He is a great walker, but if there are less distractions where you live it might be easier on him to enjoy himself. He’s about 40 pounds and he’s about for years old.

You can read more about Brick here and see more photos of him. If you have any questions, send an email to phillyfoster26@gmail.com. If you end up welcoming Brick into your home,please let me know so I can send him some toys and treats.

Subscribe now

The idea that we’ve been doing the podcast for almost thirteen years is not something I think about very much, it’s more just something I say. I am intellectually aware of how long that is, and I know it’s a fact we’ve been at it for that long.

It’s really only at Fly The Process that I can see and feel how long it’s been since we’ve all been at this together. I think it’s because the first Bus The Process trips to Brooklyn and more notably Washington DC, were alcohol-fueled, trouble-making bro fests. To be clear, when I say “trouble making” it’s not like we were getting arrested and getting into fights, more like wearing t-shirts that made the Wizards mad and doing silly chants. In New Orleans, I just noticed how grown up everyone is. It’s honestly kind of nice.

The single people are now bringing their significant others and sometimes even their kids. Since everyone knows exactly what I think about the Sixers and they probably don’t want to hear any more of that, most of the conversations I have with everyone is about life, or music. Seeing Mike is another reminder, as we only really see each other at Ricky events. When we started he was just out of college and starting his career, now I see him in the back half of his 30s, he’s married, and he sold a script for a movie Emma Stone will be in.

Instead of a trip that is a cult leader with disciples, it truly just feels like a bunch of friends going on a trip together. The Sixers get crushed, and most of us are just like, “eh well whatever, Kelly Oubre was nice. Where are we getting dinner?”

We’re all sitting in the legendary Preservation Hall, talking about the Sixers, stuck in New Orleans because of a giant snow storm, all fully aware of how ridiculous it is, but so comfortable in our ridiculous skin.

I am truly forever grateful for what I have experienced with every person who has ever listened, emailed, called, said hello, or traveled with us over the last 12+ years. I have said it 1,000 times and I’ll say it 1,000 more, I would take this over a championship every single day of the week (we know Mike would not and that’s fair).

Team Ricky

• We’re coming down the home stretch of the season, and we’re all trying to figure out how we should feel about the team going into the playoffs. Beckett Sanderson on Enter Statman gave a true reality check of who the Sixers are and what we can expect this year.

• Sixers Adam made his return to the Ricky and filled in for Mike on Tuesday night. We kept talking about the Jared McCain trade, the win over the Pacers, and whether Nick Nurse is on the hot seat this season.

• If you haven’t heard the live pod from Preservation Hall in New Orleans, I would suggest checking it out. Really an all time performance from Amos Lee and then Mia Kang decided to make fun of me before performing her poem.

• It’s a week old but this one from AU isn’t any less true.

Other Stuff

• I’m in Florida for WIP and we interviewed Rob Thomson and Jesus Luzardo yesterday. You can find them on the podcast feed, and we’ll have interviews with Trea Turner and Aiden Miller today.

• A feature on Kelly Oubre’s alter-ego t$unami, the music producer and performer. Yes, please. I will read this every day.

• I’ve said it a million times but I do agree with what Sean

  Barnard wrote here largely about the Sixers and Joel’s lack of transparency on injuries.

  

Subscribe now

I can’t help it, I love Cam Payne.

It sorta sucks that Cam Payne’s arrival came while I’m being actively pissed off about the Sixers trading Jared McCain, but it wouldn’t be fair to Cam to take it out on him.

We all have a type, right? My type is over-confident small guards who shoot too much. Isaiah Canaan is absolutely my type. Of course Jared McCain was my type. And Cam Payne is absolutely my type.

There is no doubt that at some point this season Cam Payne is going to get scorching hot during a game and either put it away, or drag the team back into a game that they were definitely out of. It will be at this point during his tenure this season when this particular stretch during a game will be all I ever remember or bring up about Cam Payne.

I want you to know that I’m not doing this on purpose, I just know I’m going to do it. I will absolutely ignore the games where he scores zero points and thinks he’s hot. I will absolutely not pay attention to the fact that he can’t guard anyone. I will only make note of the fact that he is willing to shoot when everyone else is scared to, and occasionally we’ll get a game where most of those shots go in.

This is why, ten years later, I am still talking about Canaan’s four-point play against the Warriors in a game that the Sixers lost anyway but almost won, and an almost win against the Warriors that season was basically a win. That play is all that matters to me about him.

So as we’re stuck in this weird, pretty ok but not much more than that Sixers season, at least I know I’m getting the Cam Payne Game at some point.

New Stuff From VERB Energy

Verb Energy is our newest sponsor. Kick ass energy bars that have 80 milligrams of organic green tea caffeine in them. They’re actually kind of perfect for the middle of the day for me. I’ve realized I like eating half of one, and then the other half in an hour or two.

They’ve got a new, limited time flavor that is absolutely worth trying – Red Velvet. Now, there is no dairy in there (so they’re vegan-safe), and the ingredients, as with all VERB bars are just real ingredients, check the label. But if you use code RTRS you’ll get 20% off your order.

Team Ricky

• We are truly blessed to have Mike O’Connor writing for the Ricky. I really can’t believe he’s still doing it for us. In any case, he put together five thoughts for the team after the All-Star break, including some stuff on Jared McCain, the third quarter, and some actual optimism.

• Speaking of the third quarter, we put The Statman on it. Beckett Sanderson did a deep dive on exactly how fucked up the third quarter is for the Sixers, and why it might be so fucked up. Unfortunately, the answer’s not super clear (about why, the answer is super clear that they suck in the third quarter). In any case, it feels good to know that you’re not crazy.

• WEEKLY BECKY WROTE AN ARTICLE FOR THE RICKY?!

Other Stuff

• Please listen to Kelly Oubre’s new song.

• Friend of The Ricky Kevin O’Connor did a very good podcast with Drew Hanlen, where Hanlen talks a lot about Joel and Tyrese.

• I will not feel bad about how we “treated” Tobias Harris. Sorry!

Subscribe now

We got an email once to the pod asking when I was going to “give it a rest” regarding Ben Simmons. I said never. I said, I believe, “I would have to die.”

As stubborn as I am, I do let things go, change my mind, move on, etc… But when I dig in my heels, I really dig in my heels. This is where we are on the Jared McCain trade. I’m sorry, I just cannot let it go.

I’m quite sure I’d feel this way if he’d spent his first three games with the Thunder on the bench. But seeing him flying around screens, finishing at the rim, making the right pass, and basically looking like a functional basketball player again immediately is infuriating. Every day I get just a little more pissed off.

It was this clip from Thunder coach Mark Daigneault that really put me over the edge. “I mean, what [McCain is] doing is very difficult,” Daigneault expressed. “It’s an unexpected situation for him. He’s joining a team that has had success together — a lot of continuity — and he looks like he has been here… I think it’s a credit to the fact that he is confident, aggressive, but also playing inside of what we do. It reminds me in the way that Caruso [and] Hartenstein were at the beginning last year. [It] reminds me [of] the way Mitchell was able to integrate kind of seamlessly. Those guys just plug into the system, and they look like they’ve been here for a long time. I think it’s credit to his sense, awareness, team orientation, IQ. He has done a great job.”

He just got to OKC and he’s “able to integrate seamlessly” and “look like he’s been there for a long time.” But somehow in Philadelphia every time he was out there he looked like the fifth guy on a team running full-court pickup who they called over because they only had four, and those four had been playing together forever. Daigneault has him running around screens, the ball in his hands, whatever, while Rock N’ Roll Coach had him standing in the corner, scared for his life. I’m convinced Nurse never liked him, and never really made an effort to get him going.

Surely, there’s a chance McCain never fully gets back from his knee injury and just sort of floats around the league for seven years. But there’s also a chance he’s the guy we saw last year, even a 5% or 10% chance. It’s making me insane. But hey, at least we sold high.

Team Ricky

• Quite a performance from Mike on Wednesday night’s pod after (during) the Knicks game. I envy Mike’s ability to get so, so, so mad after a regular season loss. I’m pretty sure he called the team “dickless.”

• AU thinks the trade deadline was a sign that the Sixers don’t think the Sixers are that good. I’m not sure I totally agree with him, but I do agree that they’re probably not that good. They’re at the All-Star break and their point differential is 0.3.

• We’re going back through some Carl Landry Record Club album suggestions we missed, and one of them is Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime. We had a great time talking about it.

Non-Team Ricky Related Sixers Content

• Still trying to figure out why this Ben Simmons video got made, and why all of a sudden he has an Australian accent? Instead of spending the money on this video, just give it to me. I’ll find a home for it.

• Doc Rivers is a finalist for the Hall Of Fame. What an outstanding job he’s done of convincing everyone that he’s a great coach, or at the very least, he’ll act like you’re a total asshole if you don’t say he is.

• Shake Milton said that the MVP version of Joel Embiid was the best basketball player he’s ever seen. No matter how Embiid’s time in Philadelphia ends, I’m sort of looking for the time about seven years after his career is done when we can look back at the top version of Embiid and just talk about how awesome he was.

  

Subscribe now