No Fear, No Regrets, Sixers in Six
Fuck the Miami Heat, fuck injuries, and fuck expectations.
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.Â
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It took me about five minutes to pivot. Maybe not even that long, really: I was sipping a drink in an airport bar, and as I started to contemplate if the Sixers had already ruined my vacation basically by the time I was putting my sneakers back on after security check, the calm washed over me, soon replaced by a slow creep of adrenaline. Nah, I wasn't gonna go out like that, not this time, not after what we'd just been through. Neither would the Sixers.
The Joel Embiid news -- out indefinitely with an orbital fracture and mild concussion, proof the Process Gods have run out of original scripted material and are now content to punish us with shitty ass reruns -- sucks immeasurably, for Joel most of all. He battled through one injury already to hit the biggest shot of his life, steadied the ship through some potentially historically rocky waters, and convincingly closed out one of his greatest adversaries for almost certainly the biggest series win of his career, only to suffer a potentially playoff-ending injury with four minutes to go in an already-won Game Six. Cruel, bitter stuff, for which there's no sugarcoating. He wanted this so badly, and we wanted it for him nearly as much. This might've been the year, it might not have been, but no one could deny that he at least deserved a fair chance at it.
All the more reason, then, for us to go beat the Miami Heat without him, and give him a chance to rejoin us later in this series or for the next one. I say we can do it, and frankly, I think we should.
It's hard to explain my confidence in the Sixers' ability to beat Miami without Joel, especially considering that I was pretty much calling the series a coin flip even with him. I'm certainly not about to argue that the Sixers are a better team without their best player in my basketball-watching lifetime, nor am I going to invoke the name of Patrick Ewing at any point. But a team that's freed from expectation can be a dangerous thing, and that is the version of the Sixers I am choosing to believe in right now.
Because more than the Raptors, more than the Celtics, more than the Colangelos, that's the real bitterest enemy of The Process: expectations. We won 16 games in a row in 2018, and we were expected to beat the C's in the second round. We traded for Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris in 2019, and we were expected to make a serious run at the championship. We loaded up on size in 2020 and were expected to be the bullies of the East. We got the one seed in 2021, and we were expected to coast to the conference finals. We got up 3-0 against Toronto this year, and we were expected to just wrap it up from there. Even when the Sixers have been able to live up to expectations over the past five seasons -- as we were this year in finally deading the Raptors in six -- it's always been laborious, grueling stuff that's taken longer than it should and taken more out of us than we were comfortable with.
Now? It's just basketball. The Sixers get the luxury, for arguably the first time since the Uncut Gems team a decade ago, of a free run at a playoff series when they've already been counted out. No more worrying about What It All Means if they don't come through, no legacies on the line (unless Harden's next contract counts), no contending with the ghosts of Kawhi Leonard and Terry Rozier and Kevin Huerter in addition to the team they're actually playing. The two guys leading this team now shouldn't give a shit about that stuff without Joel; one got here last year and only played spot minutes in the playoffs and the other showed up a few months ago and left a situation that makes ours look like the feel-good Grizzlies right now. Tobias has the institutional memory, of course, but even he's seemed like a totally new player the past month-plus, unshackled from the expectations of his contract and suddenly more unflappable than anyone. Together, they'll play fast and loose and without fear, because the worst thing that could happen at this point is just that they lose four times and get to try again for real next year. Compared to the weight they've been playing with, it should be pretty liberating.
Of course, they'd probably gladly strap on that weight and more if Embiid could be there to spot them. Fair, and it's reasonable to ask if they have enough to win without him for as long as he's out -- and about as reasonable to conclude "probably not." There is precedent, though: The Sixers beat this Heat team without Jo (or Harden) in March, led by a superlative Maxey performance that basically converted the final remaining skeptics into true believers -- and that was with DeAndre Jordan and Paul Millsap still hogging all 48 of the center minutes. (Not the only time Maxey led Philly to a big win over a championship contender as the team's frontman this year, either; he did similarly against the Grizzlies in January as well, pre-Harden trade.)
I pointed this precedent out on Twitter last night, and a couple thousand defeated Sixers fans and peacocking Heat fans rushed to point out the difference between that Heat game and the four to seven facing us in the weeks to come: "It's the playoffs," and "the playoffs are different." True! Indisputable, in fact. Even if it wasn't, I would say to take the one Embiid-less Sixers win in one try over the Heat and to extrapolate that to mean the Sixers would continue to win 100% of such games would probably be foolish. But there's a path to some degree of success with a fully unleashed Maxey there -- one that I think gets much clearer with Harden beside him -- flanked by a whole bunch of shooters and dudes who can fuck shit up. And we've already seen this postseason that the kid can rise to the occasion when called on to do so -- easier as the third option than the first, sure, and there'll be new challenges mounted by a stout, physical Heat defense. But I'm certainly not worried about whether or not Tyrese Maxey will come to play, and after two years of being proven wrong by him at every turn, I'm not gonna question his ability to rise to any challenge until he is definitively flattened on the ground.
And perhaps more importantly: I don't trust the Heat to make this uncompetitive. No, we probably didn't get their best punch in April, but the folks yelling at me about how the regular season doesn't count for anything should maybe also take note that the regular season is in fact the reason the Heat are the one seed, despite being believed by Vegas and most NBA watchers to be inferior to the Bucks and Celtics. The Heat aren't the star-driven team that puts off winning until they really have to, they're the try-hard bunch of culture fiends that pile up regular season Ws but might not have another gear to get to in the playoffs against the top teams. They may command our respect but still have to earn our fear.
That's not to say that they can't outclass the Sixers, especially without JoJo, but it seemed like most of us believed in them being frauds at the start of the postseason -- Mike O'Connor, who unlike me actually knows what he's talking about, basically called them light work on the Ricky last week -- so I'm not sure why we should believe any different now. Unlike the super-sized Raptors, they have weak spots to be attacked on defense, and Maxey and Harden will certainly look to take advantage. They looked impressive against a Hawks team in disarray, sure, and they will make an annoying amount of shots against anyone. But they've got some nagging injuries of their own, and Jimmy going full Bubble Flamethrower for a whole postseason was unlikely enough the first time around, I'll believe he can do it a second time when he's actually sticking the 17 consecutive daggers into our necks.
But whatever. You could humor me by listening silently and patiently to all of this, then zoom out on the situation to simply say "the Sixers were underdogs against Miami even with their MVP candidate, what hope could they possibly have without him?" and write pretty much this whole article off as me projecting, being delusional and/or having completely lost my mind. Wouldn't blame you: All three of those are absolutely factors, no doubt. I'm not saying I'm betting them to win or anything; I've already made one extremely foolish financial gesture as a show of faith in this team and that will do for now. If the Heat come out and pummel us in the first couple games, fair enough. I can't offer you any real analysis about the secret advantages that no Embiid unlocks for the Sixers, or go to the film to properly discredit Miami as less than -- again, hopefully MOC will provide us some of that if we're lucky.
No, all I can really offer you is vibes -- and to echo FOTB Jason Lipshutz's sentiments that I know in the deepest part of me we can still win this series. The Heat are the favorites but they do not deserve to be penciled in any more than we deserve to be written off. Quote tweet me into oblivion for all of this if you wish, I'll understand -- we're all coping differently at this time of year and lord knows I've lost my nerve in the past over lesser crises than this. But after a half decade or so of desperately wanting the Sixers to just play to the level they should be playing at, I feel absolutely 100% free with this team now. And so I am not going to live this series in fear, and I am not going to leave this series with any regrets. If we are to go out sad these playoffs, I say let's go out so goddamn miserable that boygenius needs to reconvene to record an emergency album about us. I am all the way in and I will not be talked back out. Fuck the Miami Heat, fuck injuries, and fuck expectations. Sixers in six. Only God can judge us.