Philadelphia 76ers: Let’s move on from revisionist history

The Philadelphia 76ers fandom can use some healing.

Fellow Sixers fans: as we all know we are living in an era of unprecedented stress and strife. Politics, the fight for social justice, systemic racism, and a deadly global pandemic all factor in. Most days it can feel like too much to handle. With all of these serious, massive issues, all we can do is try to do the best we can and be the best person we can and hope there are more people out there like us doing the same thing.

Sports can be a release, a refuge when things feel overwhelming — where we can forget about life for a few minutes and just breathe. But honestly, fans of the Philadelphia 76ers have always been a little angrier than most, because it feels like we have always gotten the short end of the stick in every sport. With that in mind, it’s time to let a little healing begin. Let’s examine a few of our open wounds, try to look clear-eyed at some of our sore spots, and try to get past the heaping pile of Revisionist History we keep dumping on ourselves.

We cannot unring the bell or put the toothpaste back in the tube. Beating ourselves up with “we should have this player”, or “we could have this team” leads only to pain and sadness. We have enough of that in our lives. And if we are being truthful, these statements are incorrect.

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We have all seen ridiculous tweets and inaccurate articles spouting nonsense like “this team should have Ben Simmons, Jimmy Butler, Jayson Tatum, Kristaps Porzingis, and Joel Embiid”. First of all, there is no possible world where all of those things line up, so we could never have had that team. Second of all, as easy as it is to blame Sixers management, because there is no question that they have botched so many things, the reality is there is almost no scenario where those three players are in a Sixers uniform. We all wish those players were here on this team. Who doesn’t want more studs? But we can wish for lots of players without banging our head against the wall saying that those players “should” be here. Let’s examine the ones that hurt the most…

Everyone has heard the story that Kristaps Porzingis and his agent decided not to let Sam Hinkie attend a workout prior to the 2015 draft because they didn’t want to come here and be a part of The Process. And sure, how perfect would he look at the four next to Joel Embiid? So it’s fine if you want to be angry because he isn’t here.

But the reality is that in 2015 the player we all coveted, including the Sixers, was D’Angelo Russell. His skill set coming out of college was seen as ideal for putting next to Embiid and creating a star combo to lead them out of the dregs. Perhaps we would have climbed into playoff contention sooner and not needed a guy like Markelle Fultz if we had Russell and Embiid to pair with Ben Simmons. But the Lakers swooped in and took Russell, leaving only the choice between Jahlil Okafor and Porzingis.

At the time, although Okafor was seen as slow afoot and a defensive risk, he was also coming off a spectacular college campaign and it was widely believed that he would “roll out of bed giving you 20 points and 10 rebounds”. Porzingis meanwhile, was more of a risk/reward gamble. He too was slow afoot, as well as underweight and the ugly taste of Darko Milicic was still in everyone’s mouth.

Yes, Porzingis has become The Unicorn, but it was a dice roll, and it was just as likely that he might become a bench stiff like a Dragan Bender. Okafor was the right pick at the time, and the problem was that he should have immediately been traded, perhaps at the trade deadline of his rookie year, because of the glut of bigs the team had. We were really never going to have Porzingis. Let’s just let that go.

Coming out of college in 2017 there were very few people alive who did not believe that Markelle Fultz was not the best player in the draft. He had put up historic numbers in a freshman season where every team he played designed their game plan around stopping him and he crushed them all anyway. The Pac-12 was not a great conference but he passed every eye test and metric thrown at him.

Jayson Tatum had a terrific season at Duke but he was not the player then that he has become now. Every player is drafted with management crossing their fingers and hoping that they improve areas of their game and grow. Most do not, some improve enough to be nice NBA players, and a very rare few make the stratospheric leaps that Tatum has made.

He has lost weight and improved his footwork, his defense, his ball-handling, his one-on-one scoring, and even the release on his jumper. In short, if you go back and look at his freshman year at Duke he barely resembles the player that he has become.

Tatum has made himself into a superstar and deserves all the credit in the world for that, but looking at it realistically, no one, even Danny Ainge, could have seen him becoming THIS good. In 2017, no one knew Fultz was going to break down, and the fact remains that his skill set was ideal for pairing with Embiid and Simmons.

Even in the 2017 summer league Fultz showed flashes of All-Star potential. Star players like Kevin Durant were raving about his game, and no one was saying that the Sixers had made a mistake. This has turned out horribly, and it stings to watch Tatum dominate while Fultz is gone and a shadow of who he should have been. But Tatum was not ever going to be on this team, and the sooner we can stop thinking about it the more it will ease the pain.

Speaking of pain, how about watching Jimmy Butler lead those upstart Heat? There seems to be some common thinking out there that the Sixers chose Tobias Harris over Jimmy Buckets. Again, this is not reality. Jimmy was not happy here and wanted to look elsewhere.

The only way to keep Jimmy would have involved getting rid of Brett Brown and possibly Simmons, (which a lot of fans think they should have done) and even then there was no guarantee because he just genuinely wanted out. This is like breaking up with your girlfriend before she can dump you because she wants to see someone else, and then pining for her after she is gone. You never truly had that girl, and trying to change yourself to keep her only leads to misery.

They only chose to keep Harris because they were unable to keep Butler and they were forced to overpay for him because they could not lose them both for nothing after giving up so many assets to get them. So they did the only thing they could do, which is double down on Harris. Landing Josh Richardson in the middle of that debacle was actually the only way to possibly get something decent and not just lose Butler for nothing.

If your next argument is that the Sixers shouldn’t have traded for Butler in the first place without a promise he would re-sign, then you must be forgetting how difficult it is to get Jimmy to do anything. He does what he wants and you need to blindly give him the reigns and get out of the way and pray it all works out. If you are scared to do that, don’t deal with Jimmy. The bottom line is that Butler was never going to be here this season. The end. Stop pining for players who didn’t want to be here and were only going to break your heart.

It’s time for us to start the healing. We have never been a community that holds hands and sings Kumbaya, but this nonsense revisionist history is pointless. We will always have Celtics fans and other national losers who want to rub our misteps in our face and make us feel badly about our team because it brings them joy to do so. There is no need for us to beat ourselves up as well.

Let’s try to embrace what we have instead of what we don’t. We still have Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons and the majority of teams in the league would kill to have two players under 26 who are that talented. We still have a bright future and a lot of potential, and negativity can only hurt our love of the game.

We need a fresh start, clearly. Hopefully we will see a new coach, a few player changes, and lots of management firings in the coming weeks. But it’s time to stop longing for what could never have been. It’s time to take a deep breath, stop looking back at the past, and turn our attention to the future. And maybe don’t be afraid to hold hands; after all, we can all use a few more friends in this crazy world.