Well At Least This Year Has Made Us Appreciate Regular-Season Wins Again
Here's what AU is grateful for with the Sixers this holiday season.
Man that was a fun win on Monday night. Remember fun wins? Wins that don't just not fill you with the soul-crushing dread of another bad loss, but actually remind you that watching sports is, at least in theory, supposed to be an experience we take some amount of joy from? If you don't -- understandable -- but Monday probably jogged your memory a little. A tough game against a hot Spurs team, with Joel Embiid ejected in the second quarter (that Holidays stress really is a killer), going down to the wire until being saved by a Tyrese Maxey slam and step-back three pointer right in the eye of.... well, not Victor Wembanyama anyway and who else on that Spurs team really even matters? That's that good feeling, y'all. That's (allegedly) what we do this all for.
We obviously haven't gotten a lot of wins this season like that, but one thing we have gotten a surprising amount of recently is wins, period. Seven of 'em in our last 10 games, in fact -- that's more than double the amount of losses we've racked up over that time span! Yes, somehow 22 of those seven wins did come against the Hornets, but if there's one thing this season has taught us in its unspeakably brutal first two months, it's that we can't be taking those Buzz City Ws for granted. In truth, we can't really be taking any wins for granted this season, against any opponent, for any reason. (Unless we're actively trying to lose, which -- despite what some may have hoped for after the broken Embiid face / torn McCain meniscus combo a couple weekends ago -- I still do not believe we are as of yet.)
There have been a lot of Sixers seasons in the past where we've wanted to FF through all the regular-season winning -- over 60% of our games in five of the past seven seasons -- with the generally shrugging stipulation of Doesn't Matter Till the Playoffs. We would still get up for the occasional Jimmy Butler game-sealing jumper over the Celtics or Jo putting up 71 against Wemby & Co. the last time they rolled into town, but late Saturday afternoon against the Pistons? Over the Pelicans missing 2/3 of their rotation? Well, we won, and that's better than losing I guess, but let's not act like that it's actually something to get excited about, and what was with their offense in the second half and can we just play one game against these shitty teams that doesn't get needlessly stressful in the fourth quarter??
This year? We'll take 'em and like 'em and not second-guess 'em in the slightest. On Friday, when we beat the Hornets for the 22nd time this season, we did so at home with surprisingly close to a full healthy roster, while the Hornets were missing both LaMelo Ball and Brandon Miller and mostly letting some dude who balled against Dan Olinger in high school play head chef in the half-court -- and of course, the Hornets cut the lead to single digits in the fourth and made it an annoyingly competitive game down the stretch. And you know what my takeaway from the entire game was? Fuck yeah, another W! I was singing "Keep on rollin'...." like I was an REO Speedwagon backup singer. I didn't care at all about the narrow victory or the stupidly suspenseful fourth. It was another tally in the win column. 11th-seeded Brooklyn Nets, here we come.
It's pretty something that we still are where we are at this point in the year. Even after this scorching-hot 7-3 stretch -- watch your back, 2016 Warriors -- the Sixers are still somehow only 10-17, well under .500 and not terribly likely to get closer to water level with this Christmas game tonight against the Celtics. It reminds you just how historically miserably this season started -- three wins out of their first 17 games, that's so few wins when you're actually trying -- that they could've played this competently for this extended a period now and still have so goddamn far to go just to get back to respectability. It might very well already be too much for a team that entered this regular season with championship expectations to reasonably expect to get those back by the time of if and when we have to actually go play in the playoffs.
But, well, it's kinda fun again. Maybe more fun than it would've been if we'd gone 7-3 going into Christmas in any of the other last seven seasons. The team feels like it's finally coming together a little, Tyrese is playing like Tyrese again, Joel once again left a game before halftime, but this time it wasn't for a reason where we'll have to be feverishly refreshing social media for days to know how long it'll be until he's back again. And most importantly, even though none of the others of those seven Ws were nearly as exciting or as satisfying as Monday against the Spurs, they've all been just as gratifying and fulfilling -- now that we've been shown what an alternate universe looks like where the Sixers only have losses, and sufficiently reminded that, even at our spiritual lowest, no team is a failure who has wins.
Andrew Unterberger 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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