It's So Over and We Are So Fucking Back

The Sixers' season is a lost cause, but maybe let's go win it anyway.

I think it’s safe to say that the Philadelphia 76ers needed that win over the Oklahoma City Thunder Tuesday night more than any eighth-seeded East team has ever needed a last-month-of-the-season win against an elite West team missing their two best players.

The Sixers are a desperate team right now. After losing four of five in a brutal West Coast swing, they’re set on a playoff path in which having to host the Miami Heat for a chance to play the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round actually counts as one of the better potential outcomes. They’ve taken on so much water in the two months without Joel Embiid that it almost doesn’t matter that they still have one of the bast, fastest ships in the NBA’s fleet (sorry for the extended naval metaphor I promise it’s almost over), if they don’t start plugging up holes and bailing out the excess they’ll drown before they ever have the chance to get back on course.

But Embiid came back last night, and they won. And it doesn’t matter that Embiid played mushy, or that the Thunder were badly undermanned, or that we only earned the W in the final minutes and came frighteningly close to giving it back up, or that the Sixers’ outlook in the standings and in the longer-term for this season doesn’t even look all that different as a result today. Embiid is back, and so are we goddamn it.

It really did feel stupid to be caring so much about the actual result of the game. It was such a junky 48 minutes of basketball, with Oklahoma City missing their top two scorers in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams and the Sixers down Tyrese Maxey and the usual other guys. “Usual,” of course, except for Embiid, who was dramatically ruled in for the game 90 minutes before tip, following 30 hours of Woj and Shams going “Wait for it…” But if you thought that Embiid would come back and immediately look like the guy who hung Victor Wembanyama’s boxers from a flagpole two months ago… well, you probably don’t know or care enough about this team to be reading this article in the first place.

He didn’t do that. Embiid came back rustier than a Neil Young power chord, seemingly out of breath from the opening tip, looking so winded at every stoppage of play that his palms probably sweated through his shorts. The jumper was off, the timing was tricky, the turnovers were plentiful. Moments of the old chemistry with Nico Batum surfaced, as well as some new bits with Batum’s even older, thicker brother Kyle Lowry, but largely Embiid looked like he’d never played with these dudes before (and in many cases, he actually hadn’t).

And if you were expecting a conquering hero’s hailing from the Wells Fargo Center Faithful upon Joel’s return — in this case I’ll admit, I kinda did — you may have overestimated the amount of juice the collective fanbase has to offer at this point in the season. I was at the WFC last night, and the pop for Joel during starting lineups in his first game back in two months was not exactly WrestleMania XL worthy — I’d peg it at around 40% the volume and ferocity of your average Bricken for Chicken response. I get it; we’re all just too tired after 75 games with this team (not to mention the decade of seasons before that), and even the will-he-or-won’t-he social media teasing of Jo’s return this week elicited more exhaustion than elation. The Sixers are gonna have to do their part first to bring us back to life.

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But Tuesday was a good start there. The Sixers looked the entire time like they were gonna lose — they could never get their arms around the lead, they were sloppy with turnovers and fouls, and neither Embiid nor anyone else could get into enough of a consistent scoring rhythm to carry the team over the hump. They were able to power through, though, with a handful of huge defensive plays late, and just enough Joel to make the talent difference, including drawing a crucial and questionable OKC foul call that the refs apparently had too much respect for Jo to overturn in such a situation.

And holy hell did it not take long to remember just how preferable 60% of Joel is to 100% of Mo Bamba. Mo has been playing his best basketball of the season lately, and I still needed just one Embiid pick-and-pop jumper and one credible Embiid switch on the perimeter to get down on my knees and pray like Aretha Franklin that I’d never have to watch another second of Bamba again that could otherwise be going to our JoJo. Even in his badly compromised state, it’s kinda mind-boggling how much easier it is to win with Joel Embiid in your rotation; he just added a fundamental credibility to the both sides of the ball on every possession that they simply could not claim to have without him.

Now, we’re back. It really is that simple. It doesn’t matter that the season is already practically good as sunk, that we have a road ahead of us that basically no team has ever taken to a championship before (and precious few have even taken to the conference finals), that there’s no guarantee guys like De’Anthony Melton or Robert Covington will be back for any part of it and that there’s no telling how close to full Embiid’s health bar will get by the time we need him to be better than the best teams’ best guys. We have Joel back, we have him for just enough time to figure out some stuff before shit gets real, and we will take our chances with the rest of it.

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Spike and some others have begun to speculate that maybe what the Sixers actually need — maybe what they’ve always needed — is to get a playoff draw that’s insanely tough right away, that perhaps this will bring the greatness out of them or at least serve as some immediate karmic realignment. I don’t know if I buy that, but I’ll grant it this much: It’s worth a shot. Taking the easy route certainly didn’t work for us in 2021, and fattening up on subpar first-round competition for most of the last six years has largely left us lethargic for our second-round opponents immediately after. The Sixers have spent enough time slowly wading into the deep end of the playoffs, perhaps diving in headfirst will end up suiting them better.

Not that it’s altogether likely. We’ve lost too much ground and too much time, it seems foolish to expect we’ll be able to recover either before it’s too late. But if we have Embiid and Maxey and maybe the best supporting cast those guys have ever had around them, we can put reason aside and just embrace the blind faith of it all. We absolutely needed two wins on Tuesday night, one spiritual and one literal. We got them both. Now nothing else matters because we are fully activated. We are finished, but we are unstoppable. This year is a lost cause, but this is the year. We have never been more over, and we could not possibly be more fucking back.

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Andrew Unterberger writes 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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