Will We Able to Love Matisse Thybulle Again?

Thybulle may not quite be in Simmons territory yet after just three years, but he got pretty close last May.

Andrew Unterberger is a famous writer who invented the nickname 'Sauce Castillo' and writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey As Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard. 

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Ah, Media Day. If the primary goal of a Sixers fan's offseason is to stuff all the shit they don't want to think about into a closet and pretend it doesn't exist, then media day is the team themselves helpfully swinging by the house to lock the closet door and stow away the key somewhere we'll never find it. As our intrepid reporter SixersAdam intrepidly reported, the Sixers played all the hits in Camden yesterday: James Harden has lost 100 pounds, Tobias Harris has embraced his role as a complementary shooter and defender, Furkan Korkmaz couldn't shoot last year because he literally couldn't feel his fingertips. Plausible? Close enough, at least until the season starts in mid-October and the closet invariably bursts open as if Harvey Milk himself so demanded it.

And then there's Matisse Thybulle. He's hyping the team defense, he's bantering with DeAnthony Melton, and of course, he can shoot now. Or at least he seems to believe he's figured out how to shoot, saying he "condensed" his form, has "made the progress" he needed to make and now hopes to “make 100%” of his shots this season. That last part's a joke, natch, but one Process Trusters might not find particularly funny after his shot proved so unreliable in the playoffs that he ended up passing the ball up like he was playing Catch Phrase and the buzzer was about to go off.

In fact, we might not be ready to find Matisse funny again at all. We might not even be able to spare him any room in the closet this offseason.

As skilled as Process Trusters are at believing in the inevitability of the best-case scenario for every one of our players for the upcoming season, we do occasionally reach a point of no return with players where they can no longer receive the summertime "Sure, why not?" Newfound media darling Ben Simmons certainly hit that point two playoffs ago; obviously he didn't even try to get us back on his side the ensuing summer anyway, but if he had, no amount of generously edited preseason scrimmage footage would've convinced us he'd ever be a reliable shooter or scorer after what we saw in the Hawks series. When you fail both spectacularly and unsympathetically in the game's biggest moments, that's usually the end of us assuming everything will turn out OK with you just because we want it to.

Thybulle may not quite be in Simmons territory yet after just three years, but he got pretty close last May. It wasn't so much that he was bad as that he was largely useless; he would barely shoot or score, obviously, but 1-2 fun stretches aside, he also barely offered any notable resistance on defense. Danny Green going down in Game Six against Miami offered Matisse the perfect opportunity to rise to the occasion and save the day; he went 1-3 for 3 points as Jimmy Butler scored 32 and the Sixers got clobbered. And of course, his lack of utility was exacerbated by the frustration of him only being available half the time in the Toronto series, thanks to his refusal to abide by Canada’s COVID vaccination guidelines -- despite having gotten one dose of the vaccine already, and despite him never really giving a satisfying public explanation as to why he decided to skip the second -- that rendered him unable to play North of the Border. Being cute helps earn you a whole lot of offseason benefit of the doubt, and smiling, puffy-haired, vlogging Matisse was as adorable as they came for his first couple seasons. But after a third straight inconsistent season was capped by his anti-vax revelation, Toronto unavailability and Miami underperformance, Matisse didn't seem so cute anymore.

But a long offseason goes a long way towards healing some of those hurts. Matisse has said (most of) the right things and filmed (most of) the right offseason workout videos -- even one where he seems to be actually learning how to dribble -- and about a week ago, we learned that unvaccinated players will most likely be able to play in Canada again next season. And even with a deeper team on the wing this year, there's no version of this team that couldn't benefit from the version of Matisse that complements his defensive chaos with offensive consistency, a reliable three-point stroke, hell, even a reliable around-the-basket layup game. It's not too late for Matisse Thybulle to have a future in Philadelphia.

It might be too late for us to root for him to have one, though. Over the weekend, the announced trade availability of the Phoenix Suns' Jae Crowder (a productive and winning player who I'm still quite sure I would be driven nuts by as a Sixer) sent Process Trusters scurrying to the Trade Machine to try to route Crowder Phillyward, most throwing Thybulle into the deal without a second's hesitation. That would've seemed unimaginable (to me at least) just a half-year ago. I considered Matisse not being included in our outward package to be one of the major victories of the Harden trade. He had started 50 regular-season games for us and we'd won 33 of them; he posted significantly better numbers as a starter than a reserve. It would've been an exaggeration to say Matisse was making the leap, but it felt like we were getting somewhere with him. All that positive momentum evaporated in May, though, and it might take more than another decently positive regular season for him to get it back.

And he might not get that much of a chance to do so. He's still on the team, for now, but without a rookie extension or (seemingly) much chance of one materializing. Trade discussions will certainly be in the offing, and in the meantime, it's hard to suss out where he even currently resides on the Sixers' depth chart. The Sixers' Media Day photo ops essentially confirmed that P.J. Tucker will be the team's presumptive starting three, while fellow newcomer-but-old-friend Danuel House should be next man up behind him -- and if Furkan starts feeling himself (or at least his fingertips) again, he might also be in the mix. Matisse could find himself as a matchup-dependent emergency option, a specialist who plays 15-20 minutes a week if he's lucky when everyone else is healthy. Maybe that's the best role for him anyway.

Or maybe the improved handle, shot and mentality are all real, Matisse has a bonkers training camp and pre-season, and he fights for real minutes from the jump of the regular season. House and Korkmaz are wildcards and Tucker is, well, old. It would not be the slightest bit shocking if there still ended up being real opportunity this year for a resurgent Matisse. But we're still gonna need to see a whole lot of that before we start thinking of him as an important part of this team again -- from either a practical or emotional standpoint -- and there'll be no hiding behind the coats and oversized vacuum cleaners in our closet for him until then.