May We Never Lose Hope

MOC takes a moment to let the light in during an especially dark time in Sixers history.

Well, that sucked.

Watching the Boston Celtics – specifically these Boston Celtics – win the NBA title is one of the most gut-wrenching experiences I have ever had as a sports fan. There is simply not an organization, fanbase, or group of players that deserves it less. 

Watching my entire timeline extol the virtues of Al Horford – a guy who signed a nine-figure contract to play here, and proceeded to completely dog it for 75% of the season while his family tweeted about how much they missed Boston – is mind-bendingly infuriating. He is, without question, my least favorite basketball player of all time. He deserves nothing, and I will continue to yell into the void about the basketball terrorism he committed in Philadelphia until I am dead.

This of course comes one year after another Process Villain in Nikola Jokic went on an epic title run. The year before that was another Celtics Finals run, and the year before that one was a legendary title run for the (lesser) Process Villain Milwaukee Bucks. Oh, and the season before that featured a Jimmy Butler Finals run in his first year after leaving the Sixers. Truly, every one of our rivals has had their moment, and we’re still waiting.

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably wondering if there’s any good left in the universe at all. Is there any reason why only good things seem to happen to the Celtics, the Nuggets, and their horrible fans, while only bad things happen to us? Is there any real reason to expect that it will turn around?

The answer unfortunately is that there is no way to know. I would love to give you a philosophical speech about yin and yang – about how darkness does not exist without light, and that the laws of the universe dictate that something good will have to happen to us eventually – but truthfully, I’m not sure that really applies here. 

It instead feels like we are on a run of terrible hands at the blackjack table, and our balance is running low. We can still hope that one of the next two or three hands gives us a winner, but if not, we’ll be shit out of luck. And seven playoff runs into the Embiid era, our seasons have ended in nothing but absolute gut-wrenching pain while all of our insufferably spoiled enemies won’t stop winning. So, it’s hard to expect that our fortunes will shift on a dime soon – and we’ve probably only got a few chances left.  

It’s all just so embarrassing. This affliction that we all have that causes us to root for this team has caused us to be nothing but heartbroken and wrong. 

But instead of just wallowing in our own suffering and focusing on the doom and gloom of it all, I’d like to shift to making the case for optimism. Not for any logical, basketball-related reason – that would be ridiculous – but rather, because it’s the only thing that could possibly make any of this worth it. If you (like me) are unable to stop yourself from caring about this team, you might as well hold out hope. Of course, get mad when you’re supposed to, yell at them when they deserve to be yelled at, but overall, have some underlying belief that all of it is all leading to something good. If you don’t, why are you here?

Here’s the thing about hope: however much of it you choose to give to yourself is entirely up to you. Oftentimes, giving yourself more hope than a logical unbiased person would give is the best gift you can give yourself.

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It’s a choice. We always have a choice. And choosing to retain whatever amount of optimism about the Sixers that you possibly can is really the only choice that makes any sense. 

And while it might sound ridiculous to apply deep philosophical lessons to the process of rooting for a sports team – to need a profound pep-talk in order to keep cheering from your couch – I think that it’s something we all could use at the moment. For better or for worse, for good reasons or dumb ones, we all care. You’re here reading this piece because you would enjoy seeing the Sixers win a championship, and because you hate seeing their rivals win championships. 

At this stage in my sports fandom, the Sixers themselves are little more than a meeting point for all of us in this community that we’ve built to come together; they’re just the impetus for us to meet, converse and commiserate with each other. And in that sense, wanting the Sixers to succeed is less about seeing their logo on a banner than it is about seeing all of the people who have accompanied us on this journey happy. I don’t really care about the Sixers succeeding, I just want us to succeed.

Whatever bullshit they have put us through over the last decade would be worth it 10 times over if they win it all. I am not exaggerating when I say that the Eagles winning the Super Bowl in 2018 made me a better person. The Phillies winning it all in 2008 was one of the happiest memories of my life. As much as it kills me to watch teams like the Nuggets and Celtics celebrate, it does make me think about how incredible it would feel if the Sixers were ever able to do it themselves. 

In a sense, being vaguely in the mix for a title for an extended period of time is something we should be grateful for; one could make the case it’s all you can realistically ask for from a sports team. For most of my life, the Sixers have been an extremely mediocre team with absolutely zero hope of winning it all or even a path towards contention. Just having the ability to delude yourself into the idea of each year maybe being The Year is something of a privilege.

And in the borderline-inconceivable event that they do break through and win a title, I don’t want to have to say that I was 100 percent negative up until the moment that they finally did it. I’d like for it to feel, in some way, like it validated some semblance of faith and belief on my end. Even if a lot of what I said about them was critical, it came from a place that I hoped my criticism would matter – that I was trying to bully them into changing, and it worked. Regardless, there needs to be some underlying hope to all of this. That is a gift that we must give to ourselves. 

And so, on what can only be described as the darkest of days in Sixers fandom, I am choosing not to believe that everything is fucked and we are only here to be cannon fodder for everyone else. No matter how illogical that is, it would make no sense to continue onward with any other outlook. 

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Mike O’Connor is the best O’Connor in basketball writing. Previously of The Athletic, you can find Mike on Twitter @MOConnor_NBA. Mike’s writing is brought to you by Body Bio, supplements based on science, focusing on your gut and brain health. Get 20% off E-Lyte, Gut+, and all Body Bio products with promo code MIKESTUMMY at Body Bio’s website.