Gassing Ourselves Back Up on the Sixers: A Metered Rating
Simmons threes? Embiid in shape? How gassed up are you?
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Well, here we are: It's been long enough since the NBA's inevitable resumption was announced that we've had time to go through all Five Stages of Bubble Ball Preseason. There's been Denial ("No way they're actually bring the NBA back"), Anger ("Don't we have enough to go through right now without picking back up where we left off with these Sixers?"), Bargaining ("Maybe if we just pretend the season isn't actually coming back it won't actually have to?"), Depression ("What does basketball even matter right now when the world is on fire?") and Acceptance ("Ugh fine I guess if we're all here already we may as well do this").
And so now, we arrive at the Sixth Stage of Bubble Preseason, which just so happens to be the same stage that every Sixers Preseason invariably ends up at: the Gassing Stage.
The Gassing Stage, of course, is the one where we take any shred of positive news about the Sixers -- any encouraging media scrum quote, any PR shot of a player looking in particularly good shape, and of course, any conveniently edited scrimmage or shootaround footage -- and turn it into fuel for our belief that Our Sixers are 100% back on the golden path, leading inexorably to the NBA Finals. All the questions about the roster's positional fit? Ancient history! Brett Brown's seemingly imminent dismissal? Delayed indefinitely! Locker-room chemistry issues, team-wide lack of road fortitude, nagging and potentially chronic injuries to our franchise players? Nah brah, you must be thinking of the Raptors. The Sixers are back, baby, and so is our entirely unsubstantiated belief that they're the team to beat in the East this season.
In the past couple weeks, we've been pumped with enough Gassing material that we should be able to make it from here to Orlando without having to stop for anything but beef jerky (still a top 10 food). Here's a running breakdown of all the Premium we've been fed lately, that's already got us on full with two weeks still to go before Bubble Ball officially tips.
Matisse Thybulle recorded a couple really good videos documenting life in the Bubble: 5% Full
Does Matisse actually being a pretty skilled videographer and editor actually have anything to do with his on-court performance once this season resumes? Not really. Will it make us slightly more likely to believe the shot's gonna go down the next time he squares up for an open three? Probably!
Al Horford wasn't in shape (but now he is): 15% Full
I fully expected Al Horford's underwhelming season -- one that got eminently more disappointing after he returned from a stretch in December when he missed a couple games with knee soreness -- to end with some kind of "well, I didn't want to make excuses, but actually I was injured the entire time" retconning of his decreased athleticism and vanishing shooting and scoring ability. What I certainly didn't expect was for Horf and the rest of our guys to be gifted the chance to get all of our offseason What Went Wrong diagnoses out of the way while there's still actually time to do something about them.
God bless the broken road of this season, then, because Big Al says yeah, he was gimpy, but it's all good now. "I probably wasn’t where I wanted to be [health-wise],” he told reporters a couple Fridays ago. “I’m not going to make excuses but right now I’m in a much better place. The time off for me was beneficial." Good thing, too, because according to Raul Neto he's also apparently being more vocal as a leader now -- and nobody likes a vocal leader who went 1-8 from three in four of the last five games while getting his feet stuck in wet cement on defense.
Jimmy Butler is still working hard at working hard: 25% Full
If there's anything that fuels us like Our Sixers being good, it's our enemies being insufferable. God bless Process Supervillain Jimmy Butler for continuing to do him, now apparently getting noise complaints at his hotel for dribbling too much too late. Yes, this is Jimmy Butler's version of calling the paparazzi on himself, yes he cares as much about letting you know how hard he works as The Weeknd cares about letting you know how much he loves weird '80s synth-pop, yes I would still take him back on the Sixers in a millisecond and yes I will not accept any postseason outcome this year that does not involve us destroying the Heat in the first round of the playoffs.
Hot Tobias: 30% Full
I'll let Zainab have this one:
i'm upset pic.twitter.com/CIy9IUCNiB
— Zainab Javed ✨ BLM (@zrjaved) July 14, 2020
We discuss the big news out of Orlando, that Ben Simmons has been playing power forward exclusively, and Shake Milton has been the primary point guard, its effects on the team and why it took so long.
Shake Milton, starting point guard: 50% Full
When I need a pick-me-up, sometimes I go to Shake's Basketball-Reference game log just to remind myself that his last seven games were real. Yep, still there: 19.4 PPG, 4.1 APG, 1.6 TOV, 58/61/72% shooting splits. (Sixers were 3-4 over that stretch, of course, but who's counting?) Anyway, any fully gassed version of the Sixers' resumed season would certainly need to feature Shake prominently, and so far the team hasn't disappointed: Brett Brown has anointed him the starting point guard (while moving Ben Simmons to the four, also probably worth a couple oz's in itself), and the entire team has taken to raving about him like the mini-Damian Lillard that he is.
Joel Embiid: “He's been amazing... He’s been the starting point guard, and I think he has a huge opportunity to help us accomplish what we believe we can. He’s been doing an amazing job and he’s running the team and we’re going to need him to knock down shots, which he did, before the league got shut down. He was on a roll, so we’re going to need him to keep it going. But it’s great.”
Ben Simmons: 'He plays really well. He can shoot the ball. He has a high IQ, can get to the rim. He’s somebody you can play with. He’s developing still. He’s come a long way ever since I‘ve seen him play. He’s only getting better.'
Great! So take his stats from the seven games before the season ended, add in three months of straight-line offseason progress, multiply them by raves from a couple perennial All-Stars... looks like we can lock in a steady 37 points a night on 277% TS from Shake for the rest of the season. Should help relieve pressure on Embiid in the post, certainly.
Ben Simmons Is Shooting Now, Pt. 56: 70% Full
It's barely even preseason until the first sign of getting unreasonably excited by Ben Simmons' jumper, and finally, we are totally and officially there. Him working on his five-foot shotput was cute and all, but Twitter digs the long ball -- and boy did we get that this week, with in-game scrimmage footage of Ben calmly stepping into and draining a wide-open wing three. Does it mean he'll still take that shot once the games matter? Yes. Does it mean that his form issues have been corrected, and that now he's as deadly rising up from distance as J.J. Redick? Also yes. Does this mean that Spike should bet his house on Ben hitting at least one three-pointer in the remaining regular season? Like he wouldn't happier without a house to look after anyway.
Joel Embiid in boss shape: 100% Full
This is all I care about, really. Nothing turns me into that meme of Lisa Simpson giving the yeahhhhh expression to her filled cup off coffee as much as Brett Brown raving about Joel Embiid's conditioning, work ethic and fitness. Give me JoJo lean, mean and ready to boogie, and life is a highway that I wanna ride straight from here until the Bubble Ball championship.