Feeling Good About Caring Less With the Low-Expectations Sixers

A little less pressure, a little more fun… for now.

[art by @zrjaved]

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. 

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All sports years should have this seamless a handoff: On Sunday, the Phillies played their 162nd and final regular season game, and on Monday, the Sixers played their pre-season opener. I ended the Phillies' schedule with perhaps the healthiest relationship I've ever had with a Philly sports team: I watched almost every night, finding joy in the triumphs and humor in the catastrophes. When the team went on a losing streak that looked to knock them out of contention, I said "fun while it lasted" and wrote them off; when it ended up actually lasting longer -- every time until the Braves finally finished them off last week -- I had even more fun with it. I gave them three hours a night, but I never went to bed thinking about them and I never woke up thinking about them. I never believed in them, and I never got angry at them. Not really, anyway.

It's been enough to make me wonder: Could I possibly bring that attitude to these Sixers, who make me tear my skin off 20 times a year (in both the good and bad ways)? Based on last night's preseason opener, an evisceration at the hands of the Toronto Raptors, the answer seems to be a solid maybe. Possibly even a probably.

I don't know what the official expectations are supposed to be for this Sixers season yet, exactly -- it's not quite preseason prognostication hours just yet -- but across the board, I have to guess they're not that high. Ben Simmons is still depreciating on the sidelines with the team seemingly no closer to making either a truce or a clean split with their fallen All-Star. Even if you think the Sixers are better long-term without Simmons, that's probably still assuming some sort of personnel influx in his stead; with him just clogging up cap space from his living room couch, it's hard to imagine this team exactly making the leap this season. (Not like with Simmons they'd be championship favorites either, he's just a convenient and mostly fair scapegoat for significantly lowered expectations).

Last night was an example -- albeit an admittedly extreme one -- of what this Sixers season could be without hopes of winning big. The Sixers got throttled by a bigger, shootier and significantly more disciplined Toronto Raptors team, but good times were had in between the Raptors runs. Andre Drummond had an Embiid-like first half. Seth Curry made a nice run of floaters. Matisse Thybulle did Matisse Thybulle things (creating turnovers, bricking threes, being tan). Shake Milton played like a Mario Kart driver perpetually stuck behind a dude shooting banana peels. Isaiah Joe got all of Sixers Twitter preemptively mad at Doc Rivers for not playing him during the regular season rotation. Paul Reed -- I would pay good money to watch that dude try to parallel park. It was a Sixers game, dammit, featuring most of the guys we love and none of the guys we don't (which I guess is just Simmons at this point). They lost by a large amount, and I enjoyed myself considerably.

Now of course, it was a preseason game, without our two best players. (Three? Do we still get to count Simmons in that tally?) You're probably saying it's way too early to write the Sixers off as a legitimate threat in the Association this season; you may be right, but you're playing to the wrong crowd with that song. Nobody is better at prematurely writing the Sixers off as a legitimate threat than I am. The duration of my Process Trusting has been defined by an endless stream of "OK, well this isn't the year, but..." emotional bargaining and expectation layaway. I can recall exactly one time that I called on the Sixers to Actually Go Out and Win the Fucking Thing, and I was punished for my arrogance with a season-ending Simmons injury and a generally miserable Bubble Restart. Even last year, with the Sixers entering the playoffs at the one seed, my playoff preview was about setting five goals for the Sixers that weren't championship-related — since I didn't think they had much of a chance at that. (Went 0-5 in those other goals too, btw.)

This is why I'm becoming increasingly serene at the prospect of Ben Simmons not being traded by the season's start; maybe not even by the season's end. It's a Get Out of Mediocrity Jail Free card for the Sixers this season, an excuse for them to basically take a year off from figuring out what it all means and get crazy with the cheese whiz instead -- young guys, funky lineups, lots and lots of Drummond (don't tell me to rule out the Twin Towers lineup just yet Sean O'Connor!). Imagine if we actually did deal Simmons for Damian Lillard or Bradley Beal, and all of a sudden this team that still hasn't gotten past the friggin' second round was surrounded on all sides by "You HAVE to win this year, anything less than a finals appearance is a disaster" takes? Who needs it?

I mean, I'd still take it, of course. I'm a loser and a coward as a fan, but the chance of surrounding Embiid with a supporting cast that could take him to the promised land is tantalizing enough that I'd risk truly caring again to see it potentially come to fruition. But failing that, and following the still-harrowing disaster that last season ended in, I'm good with taking a year off from anything resembling that level of investment. Give me 82 games of mostly competent, tragedy-free basketball with Embiid playing at an MVP level -- and possibly another 5-10 after that -- and I'll be good. I'll cook more. I'll get less mad at Twitter. I'll watch new movies in the 11 months that aren't immediately before the Oscars. I'll tell friends it's been too long since we last hung out, and then actually do something about it. I'll be a better person for the Sixers being a worse team.