The Jazz Are the Sixers' Truest, Pettiest Rivals

All of that, and the air is pretty thin too.

[art by @zrjaved]

Andrew Unterberger is a famous writer who invented the nickname 'Sauce Castillo' and is now writing 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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Tonight, the Sixers play the Brooklyn Nets in a showdown that may very well decide the one seed in the Eastern Conference. It's a heated matchup with history behind it, dating back to the Sixers' 2019 first-round matchup with Brooklyn -- the Simmons/Dudley feud, the Mike Scott game-winner, the Joel Embiid elbow on Jarrett Allen that no one actually remembers except my Nets fan co-worker who's still salty that Embiid wasn't suspended, lol. Brooklyn's roster has changed over almost entirely since then, but now there's new intrigue with their lineup, since every Sixers-Nets game is now also a referendum on whether or not the Sixers should've tried harder to trade Ben Simmons for James Harden while they had the chance. There's drama, there's fun one-on-one matchups, there's a whole lot of high-level basketball. It's about as highly anticipated an NBA showdown as you could have during the regular season.

So whose fanbase did Sixers Twitter spend the last 24 hours jawing with online? That's right: the Utah Jazz. Despite the two franchises playing in different conferences and time zones, currently rostering no players who used to suit up for the other squad, most likely not facing off again this year and literally never playing each other in the postseason before, the Jazz have somehow become by far the Sixers' realest, truest rivals -- to the point where we'd rather reheat old beef with them and their followers than look towards cooking up anything new with Brooklyn.

To be fair, this Nets matchup doesn't really have all the juice it should right now anyway. It's unclear who's actually going to be playing for Brooklyn tonight, but they'll be missing at least one of their big three, with Harden still nursing a strained hammy -- and possibly both of the other two too, since Kyrie Irving has been off on semi-excused absence and the recently returned Kevin Durant is liable to used sparingly (if at all) following his playing 28 minutes in Minnesota yesterday. Our old friend Landry Shamet (hi Landry!) might very well be Brooklyn's second option tonight, which takes a little zip out of the whole "Eastern Conference Finals Preview" buzz for this one.

Still, even at full strength, it's hard to imagine a Sixers-Nets rivalry actually being as adrenalized as Sixers-Jazz is right now. It helps that we're still coming down from the high of Philly's overtime win over Utah a month back -- a game that seemed out of reach on multiple late occasions, but thanks to some miraculous heroics from Joel Embiid late in regulation and some extremely lost cool from Donovan Mitchell in overtime, ended up keeping Process Trusters warm over the entire All-Star break. And of course, Ben Simmons' 42-point explosion in Utah served as one of the season's most memorable performances thusfar, a career night that seemingly recharged Simmons' batteries for the rest of the season's first half.

But those big games aren't even as meaningful to Sixers-Jazz as the motivations behind them. The fact that Simmons scored 42 wasn't even as notable as him caring enough to generate that much one-man offense in the first place -- increasingly staggering with every game since the All-Star break where Ben puts up a polite 8 to 14 points and has more turnovers than field goals. And when Sixers fans think back on the overtime win over Utah years down the line, it won't be Embiid's ridiculous three-pointer to send the game to OT that they immediately recall, it'll be Jo calling the second technical on Mitchell in extra time and essentially goading the refs into tossing him from the game -- and then Mitchell and Rudy Gobert filibustering after the game to decry those refs' anti-Utah bias and declare the win theirs by right. Basically, every memorable on-court moment between these two teams extends from them fucking hating each other.

By "these teams," I of course mean Simmons/Embiid and Mitchell/Gobert; everyone else on both sides seems generally agreeable enough. (Would certainly be hilarious if Danny Green and Joe Ingles harbored some longtime mutual resentment, but.) Those two player pairs are obviously the driving two-man cores of each team, though, and their four-way animosity seems very real. Embiid hates Gobert for getting All-NBA and Defensive Player of the Year recognition over him. Mitchell hates Simmons for beating him for Rookie of the Year. Gobert hates Embiid for flopping and getting calls. Simmons hates Mitchell for whining all the goddamn time. They're all extremely obnoxious and undeniably petty in their own ways, and none of them have ever gotten out of the second round of the playoffs. They detest each other no doubt in large part because they all remind each other of the least likeable parts of themselves, which is the basis for at least half of the great rivalries in history, sports or otherwise.

And you better believe this all extends to us as fans as well. Yesterday, it was Utah blogger Ben Dowsett -- by all appearances a perfectly nice guy and respectable media presence who just happens to be as insufferable about the Jazz as we all are about the Sixers -- getting under the fingernails of Process Trusters by calling out Simmons for going a little too hard on the campaign trail for defensive player of the year (which, of course, may end up with Simmons and Gobert as the frontrunners). Sixers Twitter was of course more than happy to return fire by pulling out the litany of recent examples of the Jazz being even recognition-thirstier than Simmons: Gobert breaking down in a press conference over his All-Star snub, Mitchell wearing a "Rookie?" hoodie to protest Simmons' ROY eligibility (and the van, holy shit, I'd forgotten about the van), and so on. Once again, it wasn't even about the back-and-forth as how ready both sides were to jump into the fray -- well-catalogued historical examples at the ready -- and how familiar and predictable the beats and rhythms of it all felt. Like everyone else on our side, I feel convinced of the Sixers' moral righteousness in these debates and think the Jazz deserve all the disrespect they can handle, but I would be 0% surprised if NBA fans watching the fracas from a distance found both sides equally annoying and dumb.

Actually, one way I don't really think the Jazz deserve all the disrespect is that I do think they're a legitimately really good team. It's fun for any number of reasons to dismiss them as the 2015 Hawks, and hopefully they'll prove to be just that in the playoffs when they have to face off with one of the starrier L.A. teams, or even an airtight Phoenix squad that's 2-0 against them this regular season. But man, those dudes hit some fucking threes -- and for all Jazz Twitter gets deservedly roasted for harping on Gobert's screen assists, I did have to begrudgingly admit during their last matchup that their shooters were getting some conspicuously open looks off their gigantic center's crushing picks. Meanwhile, Mitchell does seem to have a tendency to disintegrate late once he gets a little frustrated, but I can't deny that he's terrifying with the ball in his hands for at least the first 46 minutes, and that even Simmons is gonna have his issues containing him for the full duration of a game. I'd like the Sixers chances in a potential finals matchup with them, but I wouldn't brush them off by any more than Gobert brushes off a teammate not liking one of his Instagram photos, or Mitchell brushes off a no-call on a go-nowhere layup drive late in the game.

So yeah, it's close to impossible to even discuss a potential finals matchup with these two teams without devolving into cheap shots and lingering grievances. The Jazz could sweep the Sixers in a series and we'd still use it as evidence of them being babies and frauds -- as would Simmons and Embiid -- and Jazz Twitter and Mitchell/Gobert would certainly do the same if the situation was reversed. It's a true match of small-grudge-fueled players and even smaller-grudge-fueled fanbases, one guaranteed to bring the best and worst out of all involved, as the rest of the NBA-watching world just wishes we'd all shut the fuck up already. And if one of the two conference-leading teams don't make it to the finals, and this rivalry never ends up extending to games that really matter? No matter: We could be heading to Los Angeles for a potential close-out Game Six, and we'd gladly let ourselves get waylaid the day before by some stray snippy comment from @SpidaWeb45 about Gobert deserving DPOY over Simmons because perimeter players aren't as impactful on defense. Championships are ephemeral. Pettiness flies forever.