Let's Get Wasted

Screamin' A Wasting Decibels?

Here in the greater Philadelphia area, we are witnessing one of the greatest stretches by a single basketball player in the history of the team, and likely the league. Joel Hans Embiid has been playing every game and has 17 straight games with over 25 points, second only to Saint Allen Iverson for doing a thing like that for a whole bunch of games in a row. Philly is 13-4 in that stretch, rising in the Eastern Conference and Atlantic Division rankings, and it’s all, you see…

A tragic, tragic waste.

You see, we’re all omniscient here, and we all know that the Sixers don’t have enough to win a championship, and we’re just wasting Peak Embiid. (Full disclosure: I’d also bet that is probably true.) Unless and until they trade the softest NBA player to ever get a maximum contract for reinforcements (no need to say his name, the world is better when he is ignored), it’s all so, so tragic.

To which, um, the following question…

How long is Joel Embiid’s peak, anyway?

Seeing how all of these Tragic Folks are omniscient. (Could you have given me a heads up on the Bengals winning in Kansas City? Papa needs some winning bets from the omniscient.)

I’ve seen Joel fall down a few hundred times in my life, almost all of them more than a little bit alarming. We’ve seen the man get a very serious case of Covid just this year. We’ve seen him sit out two entire years at the start of his career, and many of us were probably thinking Sam Bowie vibes at some point during that not very pleasant Process.

Also, um, how long do you have left in your life, anyway?

We had a big old blizzard this weekend, which meant I had to shovel a lot. My chest has been hurting ever since. It’s nothing serious, but I never had anything like that happen after snow shoveling before, and once you get on the wrong side of (not saying), your social media and news feed is just going to start filling up with more and more people who are your age, and now are not.

Or, shorter: nothing is permanent. Everything is on loan.

No one’s life is more important than yours to you.

So yes, it would be wonderful if Joel gets great teammates and wins a championship at the time when he might be the best player in the world. It would also be wonderful, as a Sixers fan, if Tyrese Maxey is a very big part of a championship team early in his career. It would also be fine to see that Doc Rivers can do more than have good regular seasons and add a second championship. He certainly seems to have the ego for it. It would be lovely to see Tobias Harris shake off the doubters and his own Covid case to spend the rest of this year playing like the last week, where he has been a fine third banana and decisive with the ball. It would be adorable to see this slow and dough team get as fit as their leader and learn to like crushing opponents as much as they seem to like each other. 

(Left unsaid: how utterly delightful it would be to see the Sixers win with no contribution from the Soft Boy, and *then* trade him. Without a parting ring. Especially since the team seems to be doing just *fine* on the chemistry front without him.)

There’s never a bad time for the fans of a team to win a championship. Joel Embiid’s legacy as a basketball player should not be defined by things, like the rest of his roster, that he can not control or influence. Basketball players are not general managers (well, LeBron James might be), and if you already know how Embiid’s career is going to end…

Well, why are you watching the games, anyway? Me, I watch sports because I *don’t * know what will happen and I’m emotionally invested in the outcome. You? You seem to just be here to say I told you so, for the incredible prognostication power of saying that a team won’t win a championship. (Fun fact: most teams don’t win championships. And yet, many of them are still worth watching, and fun for their fans to watch.)

Personally, I’m going to try to live in the moment when I watch Joel, because he provides an absurdly large number of good ones.

You omniscient people might want to as well.

Because you’re wasting a hell of a career by not really appreciating what’s in front of you.