I Fucking Hate Everything About This

There are bad losses, and then there are bad losses…

[art by @zrjaved, Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images, Mitchell Leff/Getty Images]

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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There are bad losses, and then there are bad losses, and then there are losses where your entire body just goes kinda limp and you can't speak above a whimper and you forget how to walk and think and be a human. Remarkably, in the near-decade since The Process kicked off in earnest, I can still count the number of losses on one normal-fingered hand where I need to summon the remainder of my emotional and physical strength just to crawl across the couch onto my girlfriend's lap so she can pet my head and whisper kind things and generally humor my wallowing and self-indulgence. I don't even consider Game 7 against the Raptors, an L that many would rank among the most gut-pulverizing in NBA history, to be one of those losses. Monday night was one of those losses.

It probably shouldn't have been. I mean, it REALLY shouldn't have been, considering that the Sixers should have won Game Four against the Hawks pretty handily -- particularly by the point they were up double digits late in the second and it seemed like nothing could go wrong again. But it also most likely shouldn't have been just because this was just a Game Four, one the Sixers went into up 2-1, still with both home court advantage and, by most estimations, the better team, even after a loss. Chances are very good the Sixers still win this series, and with Brooklyn's health and Milwaukee's heart both very much in question over on the other side of the East bracket, they even have a decent shot of going further. Nothing is fucked here, Dude.

But I fucking hate this loss. Hate. I do. I can't use any other word to properly describe it. It's the kind of roiling, viscerally negative energy that instantly dissolves any joy that threatens it. Afterwards, I tried a handful of things to cheer up: Ice cream, Twitter bullshit, old Norm McDonald Late Night visits on YouTube. They worked up until I thought again about Game Four, then it was oh right and I was back to square one with a small volcano of acid bubbling in my stomach. I just can't stand it. I hate that this game happened.

I hate that we allowed ourselves to feel like we were out of the woods with Embiid's physical well-being. When we got the starting lineup yesterday, all the mystery was about who was going to be the starter for the injured Danny Green -- was it going to be Furkan Korkmaz or Matisse Thybulle, or maybe George Hill? It wasn't until a few minutes after the starting five was announced and Furkan's name was the only real talking point that I actually thought, oh... I guess that means Embiid is OK and he's starting? It wasn't something I considered much, if at all in the hours leading up to the game. He'd been unspeakably awesome through three games in this series, with no signs of incapacitation or compromise beyond the occasional grimace. I figured at this point he'd just keep being awesome until something big and obvious happened to slow him down: a huge fall, a knee-to-knee collision, a strip club brawl with all of 1017 Records. I hate that it never occurred to me that he would just come out of the locker room at some point and no longer be quite himself.

I hate that he played through a slow start in the first and made us feel like the worst was behind him. I was a little concerned at some of his misses and general lack of offensive activity in the first quarter, and at intrepid TNT reporter Stephanie Ready's tea-leaf reading that something weird was going on with Embiid backstage. But then he hit the three after coming back out for the second, made a couple other nice plays, then sank a contested falling-away baseline jumper -- which I was positive was going in -- to sorta confirm that Super Jo was back in full effect. I hate that I couldn't have been more confident in him taking him home at that point.

I hate that we let the Hawks back in a game where they were basically begging us to blow them out in the first half. Trae Young was bonking threes and going Frosty at the line, Clint Capela and John Collins were miscalibrating the rim from about minus-three feet out, Embiid and Ben Simmons were taking turns playing Moses Malone gobbling up the Hawks' myriad misses -- and despite not playing their strongest half themselves, the Sixers were up 18 late in the second. I don't know if we could've forced Atlanta into letting go of the rope with marginally stronger play going into and coming out of the half or not -- but it's a moot point, since they figured out some pick-and-pop chicanery that left Furkan and Seth Curry defensively vulnerable, a handful of shots went down, and suddenly it was tense territory once more. I hate that it even mattered that Embiid maybe wasn't playing as his best self in the third quarter.

I hate that Embiid didn't make a single field goal in the second half. Zip, zero, stingy with dinero. There's something pretty unequivocal about 0 in a stat line that just doesn't leave much room for charitable interpretation. A bunch of the 12 misses across Embiid's third and fourth quarters were obviously poor decisions, but a handful were just him in his pocket, sizing, jabbing, and lifting -- shots he's made so often this season (and this postseason) that I'm sure in him making them no matter how many misses have piled up behind him. I hate that we had to watch so many of those shots not go down last night without ever getting to wash the taste out in between.

I hate that I still thought we were going to win this game with three minutes to go. Embiid found Simmons by the basket, he kicked out to Furkan for a long three, and it dropped to put the Sixers up four and buy them what felt like their first breathing room of the quarter. If they got a stop on the next possession, I felt pretty positive the game was over. And they did, basically -- Bogdanovic pulled up for a fadeaway two that clanked off the back rim, with Embiid and Tobias Harris in perfect position to box out Capela and Collins for the rebound. But Collins pushed his way through Tobias -- a foul, though one pretty unlikely to be called -- grabbed the rebound, kicked back out, found his way to the corner and deposited a Trae Young feed that cut the lead back down to one. I hate already knowing how much that shot is gonna continue to haunt me.

I hate that as much as he was struggling offensively, Joel Embiid was still absolutely beautiful on defense tonight. He was a monster on the boards, he protected the rim about as brilliantly as you can without registering a blocked shot, he got switched onto Trae Young repeatedly and basically never let the little fucker get the best of him. Even on the final defensive possession of the game, he essentially guarded both Collins and Capela at once as the Hawks swung the ball around the perimeter, forced Collins to make a play with a hard close out beyond the arc, and never allowed him an easy look at the basket. The fourth quarter was in large part a balancing act between Embiid's defense keeping us in the game and Embiid's offense preventing us from ever taking hold of it. I hate that we'll only remember the latter.

I hate that he missed that last look. It was just about the best outcome you could ask for in a final possession: Your seven-foot, MVP candidate, 30-points-a-game-type scorer getting the ball while already rolling downhill, beating the primary help and only needing to get over and around the back-end help -- an undersized Collins -- for a close-to-open layup. For a guy who's hit some wildly tough shots to save the day this year, this was easier than you'd ever hope for in such a situation. But Joel's lift was a little off, the ball didn't get into or out of his right hand clean, and what should've been a gimme layup almost cleared the rim entirely. That one bunny could've offered Embiid a whole lot of redemption for this one. I hate that it just crystallized (and doubled) all the misery instead.

I hate how much more there was to hate from this one. Shake Milton not taking a pretty clean look at three so he could dish off to a rushed and covered Seth Curry, for a shot that might not even have counted had it gone down. Ben Simmons going 1-5 from the line and once again being reduced to a 6'10" lawn gnome on offense, after finding so much success in attacking the Hawks in the second half of Game Three. Tobias not doing anything to lift the Sixers out of their rut in the fourth, and Doc Rivers not really doing anything to help him or anyone else do so. And ultimately, I hate that none of it even matters all that much, because if Joel Embiid goes 1-12 in the second half instead of 0-12, we probably still win, and the rest is bile-venting for another day.

I hate that we have two days to think about this game now. Two days to worry about what it means for the series, for Embiid going forward, for the Sixers' season and the roster's future and what the hell we're all even doing here. With a few minutes to go in the second, we were basically making tailgate plans for the Eastern Conference Finals -- and we should have been, because Game Four was basically in hand, and the chances of the Hawks coming back to win Game Five in Philly weren't much better than them coming back to win all three games potentially remaining in the series. Now we actually have to win Game Five, which no longer seems like such a piece of Tastykake, and then win another one too -- all while holding a magnifying glass to our TV screen to hunt for any indication that Embiid is going to start spinning out again. It sounds exhausting. It sounds terrifying. It sounds like the exact opposite of how we all felt at 8:30 p.m. ET Monday night. I hate that we're back in Bo Burnham territory with this shit.

Most of all, I hate that this game is part of Joel Embiid's story now. I hate that after seven and a half games of being the best player in the NBA playoffs and coming 24 minutes away from all but guaranteeing the first conference finals visit of his career, he had one of the worst offensive halves in playoff history and now everything is once again in question. I hate that he has to play this game in his head for the next two days. I hate that "0-12" will now be recognizable shorthand for him. I hate that he might go into Game Five no longer trusting his jumper, his body, his dominance. I hate that he ever has to come back to Atlanta again. I hate that he knows how much we're hurting too, how much he probably feels like he let us down. And I hate that we have anything to feel today but complete love, admiration and awe for Joel, the greatest Sixer most of us have ever seen in our lifetime, and in so many ways -- after so many years -- the only reason we still care enough even to feel this much hate in the first place.