Let's Revel in the Mike Scott Purell Dunk, The Last Good Sixers Memory For a While
If this is the last dunk we ever see, that would be alright.
Andrew Unterberger is a famous writer who invented the nickname 'Sauce Castillo' and is now writing 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.
Andrew's writing is brought to you by Kinetic Skateboarding! Not only the Ricky's approved skate shop, but the best place to get Chucks, Vans, any apparel. Use code "DAVESILVER" for 9.1% off your order.
Contrary to our podcasting counterparts at the Rights to Ricky Sanchez, it’s long been a core tenet of If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders that you should always watch the games. Doesn’t matter the record, doesn’t matter the opponent, doesn’t matter the current spiral of psychological despair the team is currently falling and/or sending us down -- watch every game, and watch every second of it. In large part, that’s due to my semi-masochistic belief that Process Trusters, like everyone else out there creating something worth a damn, should have to suffer for our art. But at least on some subconscious level, it’s also always been because… well, you never know when you’re suddenly not going to be able to watch them again.
After last night, we know. The rest of the NBA regular season was suspended like Senior Prom -- largely due to the antics of one wisenheimer who doesn’t know when it’s officially time to stop goofing off in class, though he probably just sped up what would’ve been inevitable soon enough anyway. If the NBA comes back at all, it might be just for the postseason. And while there’s a case to be made this would actually be a positive thing for the 76ers -- who would secure the OKC pick, manage to avoid the Bucks in the first two rounds of the playoffs, and maybe even steal extra time for Ben Simmons to get healthy -- I don’t really want to talk about any of that yet. I want to talk about The Purell Dunk.
God bless Mike Scott, who has only ever had about a dozen good moments of any kind in his season-plus as a Philadelphia 76er, yet still has managed to make five or six of those moments absolutely iconic for Sixers fandom. The latest came last night, in the form of a feed from Joel Embiid, a knifing drive down the lane, and a mighty slam over an esta indecisión me molesta defender in Detroit’s Khyri “Don’t Call Me Kree” Thomas.
There are three ways that you know this was a great dunk. One is that it gave you enough runway to allow you to see it unfolding in your mind’s eye before it happened, holy shit wouldn’t it be awesome if. And then “if” happened, and it was even more satisfying than you were picturing, and you have a split-second of anxiety that maybe they’ll call it a charge but deep down you know that they won’t call it a charge how could they possibly call that a charge they wouldn’t DARE. The best dunks feel like they were simply destined to happen.
Two is that it just sounded like a great dunk. In less than a split-second of action, you hear the rushed medley of Thomas yelping in agony, Scott sounding his barbaric yawp in triumph, the ball thundering through rim and twine with an unmistakable thunk, and the ref blowing his whistle, technically signaling a foul on Thomas but really sounding like it’s pleading GOOD GOD MAN WHAT HAVE YOU DONE with ol’ Cash Out. It’s a symphonic, Bjork-worthy sonic mélange that crescendos to a fan roar that reverberates for the rest of the game like an endless run-out groove. Release that shit on streaming and Sixers fans would have it on the Billboard Hot 100 by next Monday.
Three is that Mike’s teammates gassed it up like it was the best dunk ever. Tobias Harris definitely gets MVP for not only giving him the you bad-bad shoulder push, but also springing into action with the Purell hand sanitizer play-acting -- a touchdown celebration as appropriate as it was timely. (Amazing they already had this one in the arsenal -- well-developed enough they could transition into it fairly seamlessly, too.) But don’t miss Joel immediately after the dunk, hitting a lifeless Thomas with… I dunno, a variation of the D-Generation X “Suck It”? Someone more well-versed can give you the appropriate terminology there, but when a dunk prompts your team’s star player to reflexively break out into WWE heel taunts, it was probably pretty special.
This is quite clearly the most ridiculous podcast we've ever done, as it was recorded immediately after the Sixers beat the Pistons, and the NBA suspended the regular season. Do we get the OKC pick now? Does Mike have to do Field Of 64 Jigsaws?
Needless to say, it’s been a trying and largely divisive Sixers season. If this was to be the end of it, it’s nice to be able to say that it closed with at least one truly great moment that absolutely everyone could agree on.
Defender didn’t challenge and also moved out of the way. It just doesn’t.
— Spike Eskin (@SpikeEskin) March 11, 2020
OK, maybe not absolutely everyone. And to his credit, Spike has a point, sort of -- it is true that Thomas physically flinches the tiniest bit at the last second before Scott puts knee to shoulderblade, and kinda tries to pivot his body away from the contact. That does rob the dunk of about 5% of its luster -- maybe 10% if you’re feeling uncharitable. But considering that it’s only really perceptible on certain angles of replay, considering that Thomas still sprawled to the hardwood as if multiple members of the Flight Squad had catapulted themselves directly into his chest, and considering just the goddamn sound of it all, it doesn’t matter that much to me. It was too late for Thomas to really coward his way out of the poster anyway; he was already a casualty. Not every great dunk has to be Scottie Pippen over Patrick Ewing.
In any event, I’m glad we have the Mike Scott Purell Dunk -- plus an Embiid 30-14 night, and an easy-ish home win to move to 29-2 at the Not-WFC for the season -- to keep us warm over what’s going to be a cruel winter of the NBA’s limbo season. Because the real reason I preach to Always Watch the Games is because watching the Sixers simply means more to me than all but a small handful of things in my life. It’s the highlight of my day, even when it’s the lowlight of my month. It’s not rational, it’s not defensible, it’s certainly not healthy, but even after a game as crushing as the Golden State loss -- a game after which I silently curled up into my girlfriend’s sympathetic-but-not-quite-understanding arms and laid silent and motionless for about ten minutes -- I couldn’t wait until the next game started. I always watched the Sixers, because I couldn’t bear the idea of wasting the potential joy that watching the Sixers gives me.
It hurts to know that that joy is gone now. Not the biggest concern facing the globe in general or many of us specifically right now, of course, but that’s a major source of comfort and stability — even if what was reliable about the team was their overall unreliability — that we don’t have to lean on right now, when we could all certainly use one. And even if the NBA resumes for a postseason at some point, that’s 18 games lost where we could potentially be watching Joel Embiid dominate, where we could see Shake Milton explore and expand his mid-range game, where we could yell at Al Horford for missing bunnies and above-the-break threes, where we could fall in and out of love with Alec Burks multiple times in a single possession, where Mike Scott could bust out of a brutal slump with a snapshot moment we’ll remember for the rest of our Process days.
Maybe you read those items and think to yourself hm, maybe best that we get a break from this `team after all. If so, fair enough. This team has not met expectations, and the disappointment from that discrepancy (as well as the seething mistrust of the ownership and management responsible for a great deal of that underperformance) has robbed a lot of the easy enjoyment of what is still a very good basketball team. But there still has been a ton to love about this season -- shame on anyone who even jokes about the 10-win season having been more fun -- and regardless, having the Sixers in my life will always be better than not having the Sixers in my life. I might flinch a little at watching them sometimes, but ultimately, I’ll take the contact.