Test Blog: "Together" We Build

I've recently come to an unsettling revelation regarding my Philadelphia sports fandom: I can no longer support, endorse, or cheer for the 76ers.

As it stands, I actively despise them. 

It's not the team's abysmal style of play that bothers me. Throughout the shitstorm of the 2013-2014 NBA season, the Sixers seemed to battle harder than their putrid record suggests. They lost the lion's share of their games in relatively close fashion. There weren't a ton of blowouts. Brett Brown seemed genuinely invested in fighting futility, God bless his soul. Michael Carter-Williams is a no brainer for Rookie of the Year and arguably the single most exciting talent to don a 76ers jersey since Allen Iverson. 

No, what irks the hell out of me about the current Philadelphia 76ers is the mindset. 

This team is going to be a meticulously crafted pile of dog shit for the next few seasons. The front office has publicly admitted as much. It's a method that has become quite popular in the NBA (and the NHL, to a lesser extent), specifically in the salary cap era: if the current roster isn't built to win, management blows it up, hordes cap space, and tanks for a lottery pick. The Sixers did it this year. They want to do it next year, too. Logic dictates it's a distinct possibility for the indefinite future.

Joshua Harris, Sam Hinkie, and the rest of the Sixers brass want you to embrace this. They want you to smile, say thank you, and then open your mouths and take a big bite of the shit sandwich while they take your picture and put it on Instagram. The audacity of having a slogan like "Together We Build" during one of the worst campaigns in the history of professional sports is infuriating.

"We" aren't building a damn thing. "We" aren't doing anything but intentionally losing games in the hopes of finding one or more 18-22 year old kids who can somehow turn water into win. We're praying to Jesus, Moses, and Satan that these messiahs attract real talent to Philadelphia in support of the youth movement. 

The Philadelphia 76ers want you to accept a losing culture in the hopes that they'll bottom out and return to contention. They want you to be excited about it. They want you to ignore cautionary tales like the Cleveland Cavaliers, who employed this very same methodology and used it to draft the league's best player, yet still can't find their way out of the basement. They want you to believe buying 12 dollar tickets on Stubhub is the equivalent of being a janitor at Google in the late 90s. You're getting in on the ground floor!

Sure, this could all work out in the organization's favor. The NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins are the quintessential example of what can happen when your tank goes right. Sidney Crosby, Marc Andre Fleury, and Jordan Staal were all first overall picks, and Evegeni Malkin was taken second only after Alexander Ovechkin came off the board. They've been perennial contenders and won a Stanley Cup as a result, but only after Yinzer Jesus Mario Lemieux rescued them from a move to Kansas City in 2004. Their fanbase will tell you they were along for the ride in the late 90s and early 2000s, but most can't name 5 roster players from the era. 

As the saying goes: "fuck the Penguins, Crosby sucks." 

The Flyers, for all of their shortcomings, have remained one of the most competitive teams in North American sports for almost their entire existence. Since the first lockout in 1994, they've only missed the playoffs twice. If and when they finally get it done (which is a topic for another blog, of course), it's going to taste much sweeter knowing they didn't have to adopt a losing culture to get there. 

Drafts in professional sports are designed to promote parity. The lesser teams, in theory, receive a quality piece that should help them avoid the lottery in the years to follow. The Sixers are attempting to completely circumvent and abuse this process. Their top pick from last year's draft didn't play a single game. Their other rookie was their single best player. With the exception of Thad Young, who has to consider playing in China a better choice than spending another year in Philadelphia, every other player was traded for second round picks, cap space, and in some instances, absolutely nothing. All of this in the hopes of landing the first ping pong ball and drafting Andrew Wiggins or Jabari Parker.

Wiggins, for all of his talent, couldn't get his team into the Sweet 16, let alone compete for a championship. He's an elite player, by all indications, but not one capable of carrying a team by himself. Parker has proven he's a gamer, but scouts seem mixed on how his game will transfer to the NBA.

How can you cheer for a team knowing they would likely forfeit their entire season if it were legal? How can you spend even a cent of your hard earned coin on anything bearing the team's logo? How can you pretend like the tank never happened when the clouds part? What if those clouds never part?

The scary part about promoting a losing culture is realizing more often than not the culture will permeate. Time will tell if this is the case for the Philadelphia 76ers. Are we willing to forgive Joshua Harris if the franchise turns it around? History suggests winning will bring back the casual fans just as quickly as losing ran them out of the building. 

The answer for me, however, is a resounding no, even if that asshole decides to sell the Devils.