
The Opening Tip
Hello & Happy Almost Weekend - It's the Corner Three!
CJ IS BACK, BUT AT WHAT COST?
CJ returned for last night's pod, but after we received a terrifying image through an anonymous source on the dark web, never thought that would happen. He didn't have much to say on last night's episode, in fact would not commit to even being kidnapped. All we know is this doesn't change the fact that if we don't get 10,000 YouTube subscriptions by the playoffs, he's getting fired.

Oh Yeah, The Sixers

Don't Look Now..
We're Fine...We're Fine. Real season starts in 2 weeks
This Week's Top 10 (Best MVP Years Edition)
10. 88 Jordan
9. 93 Barkley
8. 87 Magic Johnson
7. 96 Jordan
6. 16 Curry
5. 00 Shaq
4. 18 Harden
3. 12 Lebron
2. 20 Giannis
1. 01 AI
Best Thing I ate This Week
Chicken & Waffles from the brunch menu at my favorite place, Silk City. Hope for a booth and stick around to people watch.
20% OFF CONVERSE ALL WEEKEND
Thanks to our friends at Kinetic Skateboarding, you're getting 20% off all Converse sneakers all weekend (now through Sunday) with the code RICKYCONS at checkout. By the way, the Chucks you see at Kinetic are made for skaters, so there is extra padding and toughness than normal Chucks. Basically they're better.

SPIKE'S CORNER... THIS EMBIID DENVER THING
New to the Corner Three Newsletter: every week Spike or Mike will write a section, aptly titled Spike's Corner or Mike's Corner. It's Mike's turn today, but he didn't do it, so Spike is doing it again.
I know everyone is all taked out on the "Embiid missed the Nuggets game" bit, but I am sitting here at 4:45am and Mike didn't write his thing, and this is the thing I've got the most juice on.
I think the answer to most of the questions about this are surprisingly obvious.
Was Embiid missing the Nuggets game lame? Yes of course.
Does he look like an idiot after doing a giant interview with Shams talking about how healthy he is, how the eye test shows he's better than Jokic, all while doing the "I don't care about MVP but if I didn't really why would I be doing this?" thing that he did? Of course he does.
Did this swing the MVP odds back some? Yes, and it should have.
Are his health and the playoffs more important than the MVP? Yes of course, but you know it's more complicated than that.
A very easy way to figure out how you should feel about this, is to ask yourself how you would have reacted if the entire situation was Jokic, instead of Embiid. If Embiid was the MVP favorite all year, but it had swung in Jokic's favor. And on a giant, nationally televised showdown, Jokic was ruled out, 12 hours before the game, with an injury that did not prevent him from playing the game before or the game after, when he is hardly ever ruled out more than 6 minutes before game time. We would have SKEWERED him and you know it.
The entire reaction from first a bunch of us, then Joel, that "well we have nothing to prove and all that matters is a title anyway." Ok come on fuck off with that. You know it's bullshit. There is a ton to prove, and Joel down to all of us care about MVP.
It was just a horrible look for Embiid, the team, the fans who argue on his behalf, the league, everyone. Call Shams and tell him to move back the auto-publish of the article a few days. Skip the Suns game. Just play. There were tons of other options than what they did. Will any of this matter if they win the title? Of course not. But I have bad news for you, that's not fucking happening this year. So while it's a nice retort to what I'm saying, odds are it's not going to hold up particularly well. It's a hypothetical on top of a hypothetical (the first hypothetical being we all aren't being kidnapped by COVEN over the next few weeks, and the second is that the Sixers last past the second round).
In the end, the MVP odds are probably where they should have been all along, with it neck and neck with Embiid and Jokic, and Giannis trailing in the back because he's got no bag and all he does is run over people. The odds swung from Jokic like -500 to Embiid -300 because Jokic lost four games in a row while Joel was playing well. They swing on lots of small stuff. This was worth swinging on.
I would urge Joel, the Sixers, if it looks like something that we would have predicted you'd do to fuck with us, do not do it. It seems like you always pick that option and that's always the option not to pick.

Peace, Love and Process
Check on your friends & Believe in the U

-Zo