Hold on Tyrese
Hold on Tyrese
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Oh, the sigh I let out when I saw the Ramona Shelburne article on my Twitter feed this Wednesday -- loud and conspicuous enough that my overworked Billboard deskmate felt obligated to offer me comments of I Know That Feel Bro solidarity. We were overdue, really: I'm sure it was about this time two offseasons ago that we learned about how Ben Simmons was sulking over the fact that Doc Rivers didn't come to visit him in Los Angeles during the season (even though Simmons told him not to come, come on now of course Doc should've known that he didn't really mean it and wanted him to try anyway). Inevitable that we should learn about how James Harden sulked over being snubbed in the All-Star voting (hilarious) and about how Daryl Morey tried to buy time in contract negotiations by claiming he didn't want to get dinged for tampering again (hilariouser) in a 25,000-word cataloguing of all the reasons this terrible offseason will never be over.
Nothing in it really changed my opinion about anything; my stance remains that everyone involved is a liar and that time spent determining who is most at fault for our current predicament is time wasted. The only part that really moved me was this:
Thus far, Embiid has given the franchise assurances he is OK riding out the current drama with Harden, sources said. How long he gives them to resolve the matter remains to be seen.
Maxey has done the same, even waiting on a contract extension this summer so the franchise can preserve its ability to operate under the salary cap and improve the team in the future.
I'm happy about the Joel bits, of course, because we're currently at imminent risk of any major winds that blow through flipping that weathervane all the way in the other direction. But I'm even maybe even more relieved to read that Maxey is still willing to play the good soldier when asked -- because I legitimately don't know how much longer we can reasonably expect him to do so.
Tyrese has been something like the forgotten man of this Sixers offseason, not at the center of front-office drama like James Harden or in the middle of a million trade machine proposals like Tobias Harris or on the free agency countdown clock like Paul Reed. Like Joel Embiid, all he can really do is sit and wait, but unlike Embiid, he doesn't get to either make public or private demands of the front office or even tease out his frustration at things not going down the way he'd hoped. He's still just a rising senior, still the new guy in a lot of respects; it's not his turn for any of that yet.
But it will be someday. Maybe someday soon. It could be right now if he really wanted it to be. With as much as he's accomplished, and as model an employee as he's been in his three years here, he'd have every right to hear Daryl out about maintaining the Sixers' financial flexibility for both the short- and long-term bettering of the roster and respond with a well-meaning fuck you pay me. It's the same in any work situation: Even the best-behaved, hardest-working, most team-spirited prodigious young staffers eventually get fed up with being overtasked, underpaid and forever last in line. Nobody wants to be the new guy forever, especially when you're out-performing not only a lot of your co-workers, but most of your peers around the industry. Eventually, you decide it's time to get what's coming to you, one way or the other.
It's fair, especially because it cuts the other way, too. When you're the hot young arrival on staff, down for everything and potentially capable of anything, you're a rock star around the office -- if for no other reason then because you stand in such stark contrast to your demanding, lazy, set-in-their-ways predecessor. But as the years go on and memory of the last guy begins to fade, all of a sudden the flaws of yours that were easy to overlook at first become sticking points. Tyrese has been up-and-down in each of the Sixers' last two elimination series, and thoroughly unable so far to steady the team when they're spiraling; we didn't blame him much either time but he might not be so fortunate a third. No matter the rush that initially comes with a new hire being way more proficient than expected, sooner or later it becomes what have you done for me lately.
We simply can't expect to avoid this with Tyrese -- eventually, it happens with everyone. We can only hope to put it off a little longer. We can only really ask that he gives us one more year of front-office farce and sulky Joel and Tobias trade talk while maintaining his team-first spirit, his whatever-you-say-coach work ethic, his passion for the game, that smile. After that, we'll have either figured the rest out or not, but either way most of the big decisions concerning the team's future — with Harden, with Harris, with Embiid, maybe even with Morey — will probably have been made, and we can turn to giving him the overdue attention that he really deserves. And if things are still too messy for us to give him propers by that point, well, we couldn't blame him for taking a few business meetings on the road and seeing if he'd be better-suited for another shop.
Not yet, though. Not this season. As long as Joel's giving us one more try to get this thing right before he really starts acting out, we gotta hold out belief that Not-So-Mad Max stays strong in doing the same. Someday, somebody in this organization is going to make him wanna turn around and say goodbye, but until then, things can still change and start going our way. Hold on for one more year, Tyrese.