I’m Having Some Trouble Caring About the Draft
Spike feeling blasé about YouTube Big Board season, and getting a familiar feeling during the Spurs' final collapse.
The Sixers have the 22nd pick in the upcoming NBA Draft, and for the life of me, I’m having real trouble giving a shit.
The draft has always been more Mike’s thing than my thing, but to say I didn’t care at all would be untrue. I put real work into the YouTube Big Board, I became invested in my guys, and would at least be able to have some opinion about what the Sixers did.
In a lot of ways, The Ricky was built on the NBA Draft. The Ricky has always on some level been about hope (or the lack of hope), and where is hope more prominent than the Draft and the Lottery? “What’s behind Door No. 3?” is always more exciting than whatever is actually behind Door No. 3.
This year though, I dunno. I’m working through my YouTube scouting but I find myself going blank two minutes into a highlight reel — staring at the screen, but not really seeing anything. Sort of like when you’re reading a book and all of a sudden you realize you have no idea what happened in the three pages that you supposedly just read.
Maybe it’s a lack of hope for the team overall. Maybe it’s what I perceive as the slow degradation of college basketball in general. Maybe it’s the letdown of going from the No. 3 pick last year to the No. 22 pick this year. Maybe it’s because the pick came at the cost of one Jared McCain. Maybe I’m just getting old. But I simply am not getting the joy or rush out of this part of the process (non-proper-noun version) than I did previously.
Maybe I’ll get there by draft night, but I’m saying this now with the expectation that there are some people who feel the same way.
The San Antonio Sixers
I can’t get over how Sixers-y the Spurs choke was in Game 4 of the NBA Finals.
We’ve all seen that Sixers game before. They come out shooting the lights out, and build up a big lead. But we all know what is going to happen…
Eventually, the hot shooting will stop, the team will progressively panic a little bit more every possession and jack up a three just a bit earlier in the clock trying to reclaim the magic that existed earlier in the game.
The clock ticks down at half speed. How are there STILL seven minutes left in this quarter?
The missed free throws from our star player. The why are you doing that?! moment from one of the guards down the stretch (Fox’s attempted layup that got blocked by Anonuby reminded me quite a bit of Maxey not calling timeout against the Knicks). The holding on for dear life, just hoping in vain that the other team runs out of time or chokes a little bit more.
My little prediction here is that the Spurs win Game 5 but Wemby ends up getting himself suspended for Game 6.
Team Ricky
Beckett’s Draft Guide has begun, and he laid out all of the wings he hopes the Sixers take and the wings he doesn’t hope they take.
Then Beckett joined us on the Ricky to talk to us about it.
Giant Knicks fan AU wrote a little lover letter to one of his former Sixer favorites who is thriving in the Finals.
Team Non-Ricky
Sixers Adam wrote about which other teams might be interested in Quentin Grimes.
I like the new Olivia Rodrgio album. We’ll be talking about it on The Carl this week.
The new August Burns Red album is also awesome. I think it might end up being one of my favorite albums they’ve ever released.
