We Just Need to Win Two Fucking Games in a Row
AU has his own fix for this Sixers season in two easy steps (one already completed!)
If Kelly Oubre Jr. hadn't fouled Jalen Green, the season would be saved by now. After Tyrese Maxey tied the Rockets in regulation on Friday night by drawing a three-FT foul and then kicked to Guerschon Yabusele beyond the arc for a go-ahead three to start the overtime, we had all the momentum in the world. When Oubre forced a Green miss at the other end, I was ready to put the W in the books and start moving on to the Pistons scouting report. But he closed a little too hard and got whistled for the infraction. Green avenged the semi-questionable Maxey whistle by making all three of his own FTs, then the Rockets scored the next six points and the game was over. The win disappeared, as did the Sixers' spotless 2-0 record in OT games on the season -- the last good and pure thing we had left with this year's team.
If we'd just won that game, and then the one after it -- the latter part of which we actually did do, pantsing the Cade Cunningham-less Pistons in Detroit -- then we'd have won two games in a row. That doesn't sound like a very big deal until you go 18 games into your season without doing it; now doing it is a very big deal, perhaps the biggest and most pressing for the Sixers short of wondering if their franchise center is ever going to be able to seriously play basketball again. It's gotten to the point where I have convinced myself it is and will be the cure for everything -- well, at least, everything else -- that ails the Sixers. Just win two games in a row. Two games, no losing. Can it be done?
Sometimes in life, you just need to have good things happen to you consecutively. Lose enough and you start believing it's inevitability, lose a little more and you start believing it's justice. Go too long without winning and you still won't really trust yourself that the first W back was actually legit; one win is a fluke, two is credibility. When the losses and bad vibes pile up like they have for the Sixers, one win just isn't enough to escape the magnetic pull of their combined gravity; you need multiple in a row to have any chance of breaking free. Once you do, though, you may never have to look back again.
It was a little embarrassing -- earlier in the season it would have been a lot embarrassing -- how satisfying it was to convincingly beat a not-good East team without their best player on Saturday. I couldn't even really figure out how the Sixers were doing it for most of the game, and then I remembered: Paul George was back and looking healthy enough, and he's a good player, which combined with Tyrese Maxey gave the Sixers two healthy-ish good players. That's a lot of healthy-ish good players for this Sixers season! A stratospheric number, really. The only other game we've had like it was that Brooklyn game with both Maxey and McCain healthy and playing well; Maxey has rarely been healthy and good at the same time this season, and McCain has been mostly healthy but isn't good all the time yet. (Keep shooting Jared!) But shit, both Paul George and Tyrese Maxey doing good things and not snapping any limbs in half? The Sixers could win a lot of games like that, provided they keep playing mediocre conference opponents missing key players.
And they will keep doing that! Not all the time, probably, but a lot of the time. In the East, just about every team is bleh or injured or probably both. There's been a lot of jaw-dropping stuff to be found in ESPN's reporting on the Sixers this season, but nothing more to me than the nugget in Ramona Shelburne's latest kidney-puncher that "team sources estimate [it] will take at least 33 wins" to make the play-in tournament this year. 33 wins?? THAT'S the minimum?? That's so few wins!! Do you realize you could lose 49 times in a season and still win 33 games? Do you realize that the Sixers could play SIX GAMES BELOW .500 BASKETBALL for the rest of the season and still win 33 games? I knew this conference was bad, but not "the Sixers still have a shot even if they mostly suck for the rest of the season after starting 4-14" bad. Which I guess means they have enough games still coming up against those shitty teams that they really will have a shot.
One of those is coming up on Tuesday, by the way. They play the Hornets in Charlotte, second of their expected 27 matchups against the Hive this year. I don't know who's healthy on their team right now, I don't remember who's coaching them currently, I don't know if they secretly decided to go back to being called the "Bobcats" in the last couple months. It doesn't matter. It's Charlotte. The Sixers have a streak of 145 consecutive wins against those losers dating back to 2017. They beat Charlotte so consistently that they actually beat them once already this year -- which should be impossible, for this Sixers team to already have a chance to beat the same team twice this season. But they do. They have. They should. They will, question mark?
Goddamn y'all, just do it already. Joel might never be right, this season may be sunk anyway, the entire fucking Process might be dead as dubstep -- but we'll never find out if there's any chance of any of those things not being true if we can't ever win one game without losing two more. This is the week to turn it around. We got the first win. That's the hard part. Or one of the two hard parts anyway. Now just do it again a second time on Tuesday. Against Charlotte. The maybe-Bobcats. Did Michael Jordan buy them again? Is Frank Kaminsky still on the bench somewhere? There's no way to know. Just beat them and the entire world will look different on Wednesday morning, I promise you. It's always darkest before the dawn. But if the sun never actually fucking rises then it's just total darkness forever.
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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