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Thursday night was probably the first totally positive experience I've had with Joel Embiid since before Game 7 of the Celtics series. He popped up in the second inning on the TBS broadcast of Phillies-Braves Game 4 (fuck the Bravos, marry me Nick Castellanos), clad in the Harper #3, and for once, it wasn't knots in my stomach thinking about him sheepishly getting sonned by Al Horford and Jayson Tatum, it wasn't eye-rolls picturing his aloofness in the post-game handshakes and interviews, it wasn't the "OH BROTHER" reaction of being unexpectedly reminded of the goddamn Sixers in general. It was just, "JO!!!!!!!!!" It was good to see him. It's been a long time since it's been good to see Joel.
This has been a strange period for the guy I would consider both the greatest and my most beloved Philly sports athlete of my lifetime. I'm very much about not letting bad endings ruin good experiences -- I've preached about it on the Ricky and INPWCATSR probably more times than I can count -- but practicing what I preach became pretty hard this offseason. The ending to last season was SO bad, and Joel's part in it was so upsetting, unnerving and just disappointing, even by Sixers elimination game standards, that it became less of a Game of Thrones series finale (unacceptably bad given how great the show had been to that point) and more of a Dexter series finale (was this show ever actually that great in the first place?) Worse, it never even really ended -- not with James Harden still on the team and determined to continuously bring the ruckus in the name of furthering his trade demand. For the first time in six bad postseason eliminations, I found myself unable to move on with Joel Embiid. It felt like he was out the door, or maybe we were. It felt like the end was already here.
Now, though, things are feeling a little less dire. I wouldn't say Joel and I are back together -- wouldn't say that we definitely will be -- but the lines of communication are once again open. For the first time since halftime of Game 7, there's hope for us. Maybe for all of us.
A few things have helped. One has been Joel (mostly) being a good soldier throughout all the Harden disastrousness, saying and doing All the Right Things (occasional Morey subtweet aside),. He always has been, through all of the Sixers' PR messes -- the team is somehow even worse at keeping their household tidy than me and my girlfriend -- so maybe that shouldn't be that surprising or notable. But there was real reason to fear that this was gonna be the one that really did him in from keeping it professional, the one where he realized he'd carried enough water for this team for seven years and his shoulders were too tired to do it an eighth. If he'd decided the relationship with the Sixers was already as good as over, that's probably what he would have done. The fact that he's still willing to put his head down, plow through media day, and still do the showing up at the ballpark to support the home team thing... even if his heart's not in it like it once might've been, the fact that he still cares enough to pretend is meaningful to me. Kinda touching even.
Another has been getting to watch the Sixers play preseason basketball again. Normally I'd be pulling my (rapidly thinning, extremely terrible) hair out about Embiid not having played yet in the Sixers' exhibition season -- wondering what secret lingering permanent injuries the Sixers notoriously unstealth medical team were trying to hide from us. This year, I think it's the right call: Jo's still probably not quite ready yet, and neither are we. (Especially since the ever-cruel masters of the NBA universe decided to start us off with TWO games against Boston.) It's been nice to be reminded about all the other things we still have to be grateful for and excited about: the splendor of Tyrese Maxey, the potential of Jaden Springer, the Paul Reedness of Paul Reed, the... Danny Green being fully back? Sure. And as much as I hate losing to the Celtics even in exhibition season, it's been refreshing to not only see the team play competitively enough without him, but also to be reminded, "Oh right, normally we have the guy who just won league MVP, he'll probably be a little helpful when he shows up." We love our BBall to death but there's only so many times I could watch him try to flip in a hook shot over 8-foot Kristaps Porzingis without wishing Embiid was there to just go over and/or through him.
And maybe the biggest is that, with as bad as things have gone this offseason, Sixers fans have a new guy to scapegoat for everything: Daryl Morey. There's James Harden too, of course, but the recent failures of he and Embiid are too intertwined at this point for us to totally untangle them. It's much cleaner to have the fanbase's truest current in-house enemy reside in the front office, the guy preventing Jo from being free of Harden, the guy pushing him out the door with his inability to make major upgrades to the team as everyone else around us gets better. That's not totally fair to Daryl of course, and the full story of his offseason performance is still at least slightly unwritten. But our GM's a self-aware-enough guy to probably know what he's doing here and maybe even feed into it -- that as long as Process-Truster ire is directed squarely at his box at the WFC, it won't be towards the dudes on the court or even on the bench, and that's probably ultimately healthier for all involved. (Maybe including Daryl; something tells me if any GM can handle or even embrace making a full heel turn, it's him.)
Is it alll enough to remove the spoiled-milk aftertaste from our mouth that Game Seven left us with five months ago? No sir. Not by a damned sight. This has been the first season I can remember that I've been so unjazzed about basketball's preseason return that I didn't even understand what people were talking about when I started seeing tweets about NBA action -- figured maybe there was some extra international competition that I didn't know about. I don't know if I'm ready to sink from the above-the-clouds Phillies, whose vibes keep gettin' stronger like their name was Nina Sky, back into the morass of Sixersdom -- particularly if James Harden is going to play, which seems to be something people are discussing as a real likelihood, with increasingly straight faces. As the Phillies charge towards a World Series return and the Eagles refuse to lose, the Sixers are gonna be our There's One in Every Family team once again this autumn -- assuming we're once again not even acknowledging the Flyers -- and likely into the winter and spring too, as there's not a damn thing this team can do before May to convince us that anything means anything.
But maybe this is just the time we need to get back on track with Joel. We don't need to believe he's going to lead this team to a championship -- that's not happening until it happens -- and we don't even need to believe he's going to stick around for the long term, whatever that means at this point. We just need to get a little of that old feeling back watching him. We need to once again be dazzled by him, inspired by him, to believe that anything with him is possible. We need to really want the best for him, even if we're not convinced he'll ever get it. We need to look at him and not see him getting burned to a crisp on the Boston Garden parquet. We need to look at him and still think, no matter what, this was all worth it. I don't know if we'll get back there, don't know if we even can. But I can feel the door opening. I can see the path. I hope we're ready to take the first step.