The “young” team

The Philadelphia 76ers show an impressive amount of composure as they shake off their bullies and move past the Miami Heat into the second round.

You have just witnessed a reversal of stereotypes. The “young, talented, inexperienced team” took on the “veteran, playoff-tested team” and dominated with class. The Miami Heat tried to punk the young Philadelphia 76ers. They tried to rile them up and crack their composure by calling them names, pushing them around, yanking them down by the arm, and slapping their heads.

In response, the 76ers showed that they in fact were the team with composure. When the 31-year-old, black belt James Johnson tried to get in the 21-year-old Ben Simmons’ head, Simmons would shrug him off. He never retaliated and, really, he didn’t even acknowledge the bullying that he was receiving. Instead he just played basketball and did his bullying on the court.

When the 36-year-old “classy veteran” Dwayne Wade tried to amputate one of Justin Anderson’s arms, Anderson also didn’t even retaliate. He made sure to voice his displeasure, which earned him a tech, but all in all he calmly avoided a potentially violent fight.

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In fact, if you look back at every “scuffle” or heated exchange of words in this series you will notice that they were all started by Heat players and ended by Sixers players not retaliating. This shows that despite their age, the 76ers played with more maturity than the older Miami Heat.

The young

In my mind this is what I think that the media in general gets wrong. Older teams or teams with older players don’t receive criticism for composure or have their composure questioned as much as younger teams do.

The big question going into the playoffs this year for the 76ers wasn’t about if they had enough talent to get all the way.  Instead critics would question if the 76ers had “poise” or ask if they were “ready” or inquire if they had the maturity to make it through the playoffs. These B.S. words are just said to avoid acknowledging the stereotype that young teams can’t make it far in the playoffs.

But what I want to ask other media members is why can’t someone under the age of 25 have poise? Why can’t a team full of young players be ready to win a championship? Why are we saying that young people can’t succeed to the level of their older counterparts?

This series showed how a “young” team can be more mature than older team. The 76ers played the whole series like they belonged in the playoffs despite all the efforts of the opposing team telling them that they didn’t belong. That’s something special that needs to be talked about more. This team is fighting the adversity of a stereotype and breaking it all at the same time.

The Old

On the flip side of that, why do we assume that an older player or team has composure? When watching the Miami Heat this series, I saw a team with zero composure on the court. Everything seemed to affect them and all of their players couldn’t help but jaw and bark at every player on the 76ers.

This was a constant theme throughout the series and it definitely didn’t help them win at all. It is weird that no one seems to think about this like it is a problem. Instead of criticizing how the Heat played you will instead hear that they played with “intensity!”. Umm, yeah, sure. In this case, “intensity” just seems like another word for “out of control”.

No matter what you want to call it, the facts are that the Heat lost the series. They tried to be the bullies and it didn’t quite work. This time the older team didn’t play with the supposed experience they should’ve had and it cost them. Which begs the question even more of why this stereotype still exists.

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Here They Come

After this series the 76ers should be acknowledged as a good team rather than just a good young team. Because frankly the 76ers are championship contenders THIS year. Just because they weren’t good last year doesn’t mean that they have to ease their way into greatness.

The process was criticized because of how different it was from what the rest of the league was doing. So in the same way, the results of the process are going to be different. We are seeing these differences now.

Most teams do need a couple years to be good, and then better, and then ultimately the best. We saw this with the Warriors between 2013-2015. However, “the process” is different from this normal style of development by design.

“The process” skips steps. Hinkie built the team to be bad, then bad, then bad again, then bad yet again, but then finally really good.

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He didn’t necessarily have this exact timeline, or have this exact result in mind, but it freaking worked! Scream it from the hills, “the process” worked. Here they come. The process isn’t quite over.