"Yeah, But Still." - A Reasonable Explanation for the Sixers Win Last Night

Last night, the Philadelphia 76ers upset the defending-champion Miami Heat, 114-110, in their home opener at the Wells Fargo Center. Considering the Heat are favorites to win the NBA Finals again this season, and the Sixers are a young, rebuilding team, this was a particularly stunning result (not to mention the fact that the game took place in front of what will likely be the largest home crowd the Sixers have all year), and the unseasoned Sixers had a right to be thrilled.

Naturally, such a result demanded explanation. No, rookie point guard Michael Carter-Williams’ historic near quadruple-double and Evan Turner and Spencer Hawes each making 10 shots from the field couldn’t have been enough. Surely something happened to LeBron James, Chris Bosh and the Heat, something that caused them to lapse into mortality for huge chunks of Wednesday’s game.

I’d like to take a moment to address and present a counter-argument for each of these potential explanations for why the Heat currently have a worse winning percentage than the Sixers this season.

1. Dwayne Wade sat out this game as a precaution. If he had been rested and ready to play, the Big Three would have overwhelmed the Sixers.

Answer: The over-under for Sixers wins this season was 16.5 according to Paddy’s Power Sportsbook (most sports books set it at either 16 or 16.5 for the Sixers). Only three teams in NBA history have finished with less than 17 wins in a full regular season. Vegas was essentially daring gamblers to bet on the Sixers being the fourth team ever to lose that often, and in doing so potentially challenge the all-time worst record mark set by….well…the Sixers, in 1972-73. To put it in short, the 2013-14 Sixers were expected to be really bad this year.

2. The Heat were playing one night after opening their season at home against the Chicago Bulls, their toughest competition and most bitter rival in the Eastern Conference, and then traveling up to Philadelphia overnight for this game. They were exhausted.

A: I mean, really bad. The Sixers were 34-48 last year, good for the 19^th best record in the 30-team NBA. So what did they do in the offseason? Well, their head coach, Doug Collins, resigned to return to a career in TV broadcasting; their GM, Tony DiLeo, was fired after 20 years with the organization in various roles; and new GM Sam Hinkie traded the team’s best player, 23-year old point guard Jrue Holiday. When you consider a 23-year old basketball player to be a little long in the tooth to play for you, you know your team is going to lose a zillion games.
They also let go of Andrew Bynum, which...I mean...Jesus...I don't even wanna talk about it.

3. LeBron James isn’t fully in shape for the season yet. He took some preseason time off for his honeymoon that he normally would’ve used to train, so…

And you know what the Sixers got in exchange for Holiday? A draft pick in next year’s draft and big man Nerlens Noel, a college star who probably won’t play at all this year as he recovers from ACL surgery. The whole idea is to be as bad as possible this season so the Sixers will have a high pick in next year’s draft, which is expected to be one of the best in decades. In the meantime, though…MAXIMUM SUCKITUDE.

4. The Heat were probably looking ahead to Friday’s game against Brooklyn and…

You know how most teams have a salary cap, a limit on how much money they're allowed spend on players each year? There is also a salary floor in the NBA, meaning teams are required to spend at least $52 million on their players, and the Sixers weren’t meeting it by the time the season started. While teams like the Heat panic over whether they’ll be able to fit LeBron and his teammates under the salary cap next season, the Sixers are doing the equivalent of swinging by the Dollar Store at the last minute to prepare for a cocktail party at the governor’s mansion.

There’s no real penalty for this, fortunately– they’re just required to pay their existing players a little more each to reach the floor, meaning each of their terrible basketball players is getting even more money to be terrible.

5. I feel like you’re not even addressing my points right now.

Yeah, Michael Carter-Williams had a splendid game, but he’s a project player and will probably take some time before he’s consistently good. The dude is more raw than the chuck steak sitting on the floor of a Food Lion freezer. (Feel free to borrow that one, Rick Reilly) In his last year of college basketball at Syracuse, MCW shot 39.3 percent from the field, which would’ve been good for 123^rd-best in the NBA last season.

That’s not to mention the rest of the team, who finished 22^nd in the league last year in shooting percentage. For those who don’t follow basketball closely, it should be noted that “making shots” is a sought-after skill that many would consider crucial to a team's success, as the objective of the game is is to make more shots than your opponent does.

6. This is kind of rude. I mean, you did ask me to do a point-counterpoint with you, and you’re ignoring everyth-

And poor Marc Zumoff. He’s entering his 18^th season as the Sixers’ exuberant play-by-play announcer, and never has he sounded more resigned to a woeful season of basketball than before last night’s game, trying in vain to hype up a squad that will likely score less than…um…some guy who isn’t very good at picking up women at a bar. (Boom!)

Seeing the Sixers come onto the floor with the correct uniforms on probably would’ve been enough success to warrant Zumoff’s typical ecstasy last night, so it’s safe to say the breakneck 19-0 run the Sixers started the game on whipped him into a frenzy. He was shouting and screaming about the crowd “RISING UP!” like it was Game 7 of the Finals, probably figuring he won’t be needing his voice for the next 81 games anyway. At least then, we'll still have Molly Sullivan. Sweet, sweet Molly Sullivan.

7. You’re not even talking about the team anymore. I’m leaving.

Zumoff has it right, though. Why not celebrate? All the wet blankets who kept comparing this Sixers win to the Eagles’ first win this season under Chip Kelly (which was not exactly a good indication of things to come) weren’t breaking any news to Sixers fans. We all know the team is going to suck this year, and suck hard. It’s only a matter of time before MCW starts flinging behind-the-back passes into the stands, Tony Wroten’s reckless abandon begins to hurt the team more than it helps, we hear the PA announcer say the words, “Now entering the game for the Sixers: Kwame Brown!” (NO NO NO NO NO), and the team’s only veterans with any sort of equity (Thaddeus Young, Evan Turner and Spencer Hawes) are either traded or let go in favor of more draft picks or salary cap space.

8. Oh look, "The Talk" is on. Let's see if Sharon's any better at staying on point than you are...
Did I mention we're STILL paying Kwame Brown to play basketball?

9. We get it. The Sixers are really bad, and the Heat are really good. So what? It's one game.

Given the extraordinarily low bar most of us had set for the team (it’s basically just laying on the ground), our expectations for a game against the defending champs was something along the lines of “don’t lose by more than 20.” Instead, we got a remarkable debut for MCW, who will hopefully end up being our franchise point guard for the next 10+ years; stifling defense against the best basketball player in the world; an exciting, up-tempo game from several young, unknown players hungry for a chance to prove they’re more than roster filler; a special night honoring one of the best players in team/NBA history; and, of course, a chance to play the theme song to end all theme songs.

10. Oh God, no, please, don’t-
ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIXERS! TEN NINE EIGHT SEVENTY SIXERS...

Kids Playing Sports! Everyone Look!

I read a lot like I drive: I’ll start at a nice, safe pace, paying attention to little details and retaining all the information being thrown at me*. Then, about ten minutes in, I’ll start going faster and faster, my brain will stop sucking up the info, my eyes will glaze over, and before you know it, there I am flying off the Ben Franklin Bridge with three missing wheels and at least four dead pedestrians in the backseat after flying through my windshield. (I’m a dangerous reader)

*-I also used to speed read before an exam in college much like I speed to work now when I’m late: I crank some Queens of the Stone Age, drink about 15 Dr. Peppers, blaze ahead with no regard for human life… and before you know it, there I am flying off the Ben Franklin Bridge with three missing wheels and at least four dead pedestrians in the backseat after flying through my windshield.

Point is, my reading patterns are sporadic; it can take me five minutes to bang out “Fountainhead” or five weeks to get through the foreword of “Everybody Poops.” (I’m assuming it has a foreword – otherwise, I feel really dumb about how my college thesis went)

So while I haven’t forgotten about this (we’ll get back to that sooner than you think), I’ve also been catching up on a backlog of magazines I’ve received over the last few months. You know, the intelligent stuff. This includes ESPN The Magazine, which I’ve been receiving intentionally or otherwise for about six years. For the most part, ESPN the Mag specializes in theme issues nowadays. The Money Issue. The Athletes Take Over Issue. The Check Out These Nekkid Pix Issue.

This past month, we got to the “Kids in Sports” issue.  Adorning its cover is Dylan Moses, a 6’1”, 215-pound running back from Baton Rouge, La. who’s been sitting on scholarship offers from LSU and seven other schools for a little over a year. He starts his day at 4:30 AM with 400 pushups, 800 sit-ups, 10 minutes of jump rope and a mile run.

Dylan is 15. He received his first offer in 8^th grade.

In 8^th grade, my biggest decision was whether to spend my Saturday afternoons playing basketball or video games, and I was pretty bad at picking between that. By my senior year of high school, I was barely able to pick what college I wanted to attend with my family asking me about it daily, let alone dozens of journalists and several rabid fan bases.

The article cites a handful of other examples of barely-teens being asked to make decisions most high school seniors dread – where to go to college, who to trust their career training with – because they happen to run like gazelles and throw footballs across different area codes.

This has not-so-secretly been happening for years. ESPN has made signing day, the day most top high school recruits choose which college campus they’ll be gracing their presence with, a nationally televised event. T.J. McConnell, former point guard for my alma mater Duquesne, signed with the Dukes two full years before graduating high school. He’s now at the University of Arizona, transferring after his sophomore year.

This really started with LeBron James, though. There were plenty of high school basketball players who chose to forgo college and enter the NBA Draft before the league began to require players be one year removed from high school before declaring. Some, like Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant, became superstars, while others, like Kwame Brown and Darius Miles…didn’t.

But none of them received the attention LeBron did. Many writers wondered if he shouldn’t be allowed to declare for the draft after his junior year of high school. James agreed, petitioning the league to allow him into the 2002 draft despite having not finished high school.

Instead, LeBron was forced to wait until the 2003 draft, when he was selected first overall by his hometown team, the Cleveland Cavaliers. Seven years later, LeBron left the Cavs for the Miami Heat in a nationally televised event known as “The Decision,” a 75-minute ESPN program exclusively devoted to announcing where LeBron would play the next year.

It’s amazing – simply amazing, I tell you – that a player who received nonstop media attention since before he could drive, who was referred to as “The King” before he was allowed to vote, who had his first slew of shoe deals and sponsorships before he could legally take his first sip of alcohol, managed to grow into an out-of-touch egomaniac.

LeBron has dealt with near constant international attention better than most physical prodigies. This is far from a scientific study, but is it at all possible that giving extremely young athletes an unbelievable amount of media attention could be bad? Could inflate their big heads, or cause them to collapse under pressure?

The easy response is to blame the media, blame ESPN, but there’s a reason they keep producing issues like this and covering signing day – we dig it. We marvel at it, and the media supply what we want. If we ever stopped watching, they'd stop broadcasting it. (This is why I also roll my eyes whenever people bitch about some of the garbage ESPN airs, or when a league has a lockout. Stop watching or buying the product if it pisses you off so much. Hit 'em in the wallet. Arrange an actual boycott)

Maybe I’m totally off base and I’m just becoming a grumpy old man. Maybe I’m just ashamed that 15-year-old Dylan could most certainly beat the stuffing out of me in any athletic endeavor.

I’m simply wondering if it’s worth marveling at a phenom for a few minutes with the knowledge that they’ll likely never live a normal adolescence. Particularly with YouTube and Twitter and the like, it’s more likely than ever that these actual “diaper dandies” will be overexposed to the point of stunting their maturity.

Ah, who are we kidding? Let’s watch this two-year-old shoot a basketball.