Well At Least We're Crushing the Tanking Part of the Season
The Sixers may not have won for shit this year, but they are championship-level losers.
My heart swelled with pride on Monday morning reading the box score of the Pelicans-Bucks game from the night before. Of course, I’d hoped that the Pelicans had found a way to squeeze out the W -- putting the Sixers just one game ahead of them in the win column -- and though they'd come surprisingly close, they ultimately fell 111-107. But then I looked at the names of the players on the Pels side of the box score: No Zion Williamson or CJ McCollum of course, but now also no Kelly Olynyk or Jose Alvarado, even. Instead: dudes named Kelon Brooks Jr., Antonio Reeves, Karlo Matkovic, even our old friend Lester Quinones. This was our doing; we'd pushed New Orleans to this. With only four games to go, they'd probably finish ahead of us in the tanking rankings, but we made them play all 48 minutes. We made them really earn it.
The Sixers did a shit job of winning games this year, but now that we've pivoted to losing, we are fucking eating. The Sixers have lost 12 games in a row, and when the season ends three games from now, that number will almost certainly be 15 -- almost exactly as many games (16) as the Sixers won to end the 2017-18 season, and very nearly as impressive a streak. We have had next to no margin of error with our losing, and it turns out none was needed anyway. We may not have been the championship contender that we hoped and possibly even expected going into this season, but now that we're in the home stretch of the Tankathon battle royale, you can damn sure that we're the team no one wants to play.
The Raptors thought they could hang, but even as they openly sabotaged their own mid-game lineups, their will to win was just too strong to compete with true tankers -- they might finish with a win total that starts with a "3"; they couldn't see us with the Hubble telescope at this point. The Nets were more formidable, but even they couldn't avoid picking up a W or two during Losing Time; they're the mere 67-win Spurs compared to our 73-win Warriors of a tanking juggernaut. The Pelicans... well, they got a little too big a head start on us for us to catch up in time sadly, but we certainly put the fear of Hinkie into them right when they probably thought they could cruise to the finish line. At the very least, we reminded everyone: Don't ever underestimate the heart of a quitter.
And the Sixers have Lost the Right Way, too. No mid-game shenanigans needed, really -- the Sixers are more than bad enough to fail honestly at this point. Which isn't to say that they've been losing every game by 50; they've actually made for pretty watchable games the past couple weeks, even for one or two legitimately exciting finishes. But 48 minutes always seems to be just long enough for the Sixers to have too many chances to let go of the rope at some crucial point, and invariably, they'll do it. It's pathetic, but it's honest.
They've got the right guy leading the charge, too. I'm still staggered by how legitimately good Quentin Grimes has proven to be; he's been too consistent for too long at this point against too wide a range of opponents -- while often getting too close to zero help from his own teammates -- for it to be a tank-season aberration or mirage, there's simply no way to average 27 points a game for five weeks straight on impressive shooting numbers and improving passing efficiency and have it not be at least somewhat meaningful. But however good the numbers are, not since the 44-point night against Golden State have they been good enough to threaten a true win; even on Saturday when he hit five threes in the fourth quarter to pull us within striking distance of the Timberwolves, I was never worried it would cost us the L. Q is always gonna come up just one miracle short on this team, and we love him for it.
And Justin Edwards? Well, I guess either the team or the universe decided he was getting too good for comfort, so immediately after I wrote about how he was going to be better than one of the future Hall of Famers on our roster next year, he sucked for three games and then got hurt. We'll see him again, but probably not this season, and that's fine; he'd basically placed out of this tanking campaign like it was a pointless college prereq course anyway.
But that's been what's really ruled about this tanking stretch: It's felt legitimately productive. The last quarter of this season started like it was going to feature basketball at a level of unseriousness none of us had ever even contemplated before, but gradually it has revealed true purpose: the opportunity for Grimes to prove himself a formidable offensive weapon, for Edwards to show he can be a high-level complementary starter, for Adem Bona to fly around a whole bunch and dunk and block shots and randomly score 28 in one game and essentially pass the audition to be next year's frontrunner for the backup center spot. We've figured some shit out that really could -- should -- benefit this team next year, and stuff we likely wouldn't have gotten the chance to experiment with if we still had to focus on something as boring and archaic as winning.
Still, you tank to lose the game, and that's exactly what the Sixers have done for the last two months: They're now a breathtaking 3-27 over their last 30 games, a losing pace that would make the peak-Hinkie 2016 Sixers -- even the record-settingly awful 1973 Sixers -- ask, "Y'all good?" They are essentially locked into the No. 5 spot on the Tanking Rankings, which gives them a 64% chance of keeping their pick. That's still a disturbingly high chance of losing that pick this summer -- better than a one in three chance that this was all for nothing -- but I don't think that would be the end of the world; at least there'd be no risk of us having to do this all again next year, and once all of Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Paul George got busted up this season, it's not like we stood to gain much from winning these games anyway.
And at the very least, the Sixers can look in the mirror at the end of this tanking stretch and say they absolutely gave 100% to the cause. It took more than luck to lose that game in Houston where they hit 55 threes and led by five with 25 seconds to go. It took more than hope to fall short against each of the Pelicans, the Nets (twice!), the Raptors (three times!) and the Wizards. It took focus, determination and commitment to suck that badly -- constructively -- and the Sixers should be celebrated for their efforts. Some mountains may ultimately end up being too high for this team, but ain't no valley low enough to keep them from tanking their way to it. And no one, not even Adam Silver, can ever take that away from them.
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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Fantastic work as always, AU. As usual you have captured my thoughts and feelings better than I could have on my own.
“at least there'd be no risk of us having to do this all again next year” - don’t you know Murphys Law applies specifically to the Sixers?