What Spike Is Thankful For
He doesn’t eat Turkey so who knows what this list will be.
This column is written by Mike Levin (@michael_levin) and is brought to you by the Official Realtor of The Process, Adam Ksebe.
As I sit here, eight days removed from hip replacement surgery and unable to sit in the car long enough to visit my family on Thanksgiving, I have some time to reflect.
For Thanksgiving this year, I present to you, ‘The Things In The Ricky and Sixers Orbit I Am Thankful For,’ as I try to celebrate rather than fear my own mortality.
I Am Thankful For Nick Nurse - I truly have no idea how good a coach Nick Nurse is. It would seem impossible that he’s a bad coach, and I give the benefit of the doubt to anyone who loves music as much as he does. But as I saw Gregg Popovich, horrible loser, admonishing the crowd as they booed Kawhi Leonard Wednesday night, it made me think ‘this is some Doc Rivers would do if he cared enough about anything besides golf.’ I am thankful for Nick Nurse because he’s not Doc Rivers.
I Am Thankful For Furkan Korkmaz - It’s a cliche, but have you ever been in a clothing store with your significant other as they shop, and make eye contact with another person in the very same situation? There is a kinship there. There is a bond. You’re not together, but you’re together. Furk has been here with the Sixers forever, and has desperately tried to leave on three different occasions. There is no Sixers player who I am together with as much as I am Furk (still believe he’s good btw).
I Am Thankful For The Entirety Of Team Ricky - Mike, CJ, AU, MOC, Alonzo, Abbie and TBD (shout out Sixers Adam forever), I am forever grateful for the fact that you’re part of the journey. Everyone gets paid for doing what they do for Team Ricky, but it’s not money that’s changing anyone’s life. Everyone seems to do it because they love being a part of it. I am incredibly proud of our team, and the differences between us all.
I Am Thankful That All Of the Contenders In The East Are Pretty Suspect Honestly - Let’s be honest, there’s something wrong in Milwaukee. Giannis has no desire to be Tyson Chandler, Khris Middleton is Wilson Chandler level dead, and the coach may have already lost the team. The Celtics are already having team meetings, and still don’t have a reliable lead playmaker. Everyone else in the top eight right now are cute stories (Magic, Pacers), cute stories that will soon turn into ‘what are we doing here’ (Knicks) or simply ‘what are we doing here (Cavs). To be clear, the Sixers could be put into any of those categories depending on the week. But I’d rather my friend group all be as ugly as I am if we’re going out for a night on the town.
I Am Thankful For Three First Round Picks - The two best parts about being a sports fan are a) when the team is good but almost equally b) when you have some fair expectation that the team could be better. If not for the trade of The System and the two first round picks it brought, any believe that the team could get substantially better by trade would be a delusion. Now, it’s possible. It’s also possible that Daryl makes some sort of fucked up trade that makes us all mad, or that we hold on to the picks until the offseason. But at least having ‘B’ which could be more clearly defined as ‘hope,’ is enough for now.
I Am Thankful For The Ricky Community - It’s funny to look at the emails over the years, which now many times start with “I started listening when I was in middle school, now I have a doctorate and am married with three kids.” We’re all in a thousands of people deep game of chicken here in watching the Sixers after all that’s happened over the last year. We’re all at that dinner out with a bunch of people and nobody will just get up and stretch and say, “well I’m gonna get moving.” I can’t quit because you can’t quit. And you can’t quit because they can’t quit. It will end in the appropriate cultish fashion when we all get hit by the train at the same time.
I Am Thankful For The Return Of Robert Covington - I was always right about him, he’s still good, and if you’re one of the people who always complains about him and are reading this, I wrote this for you. If we were on a dating app that uses your takes on basketball in lieu of other information, not thinking Covington is good would be tops on my list of red flags. I will not date you if you don’t think Covington is good.
I Am Thankful I Discovered Lana Del Rey - What perfect music to sit alone in my house with my dog listening to! I can’t believe I’ve never listened to her before. I know I’m late to the party but the party is still raging!
Happy Thanksgiving. We were right.