LeBron James is a Sixer, and I have thoughts.

I'm not so much on the sports anymore because money and time and lack of each, but when the biggest basketball name in the world joins my team, commenting is required. So here goes.

> Props to the man for choosing discomfort.

James has, at the very end of his career, chosen to go to a tortured and torturing fanbase and media center that is going to demand a championship no matter what. He's doing this with a team that has limited rim protection due to Joel Embiid no longer being what he was, with three ball-dominant offensive identities, with the flux that is the arrival of a Finals MVP.

Candidly, this is not the choice I would have made if I were in his shoes. I'd have stayed in California, where the weather is nicer, people don't freak out if you don't win everything, and you never face the possibility of 15K+ fans from a division rival turning your home game into an embarrassment. But that's why he's him. He takes big swings.

> People who have hated James forever can stop or STFU.

Why did James choose Philadelphia, of all places? Because athletes *like* the way things used to be, where the road team gets booed and the home team gets a ton of attention. They don't like everyone in the room playing at being a GM, caring about their individual nerd bets (fantasy) or individual degenerate bets (actual gambling). They care about the Game and the Outcome, and so does this backwater and traditional town. Bryce Harper didn't choose Philadelphia because it's cyberpunk. Saquon Barkley didn't choose Philadelphia for the food. James didn't choose it for the weather. They all chose it because the fans mark out for the home laundry, and hiss at the road duds.

So if you've hated James his whole playing career? You were supposed to. He didn't play for your team and he made your team lose a lot. But now that he does? You get to be the baseball people who swallowed a decade of Pete Rose being the living definition of cringe and enjoy the World Series win. You get to re-frame your Michael Jordan worship (another guy who you were never supposed to root for, by the way, and also a complete killjoy who barked at every ref that ever didn't give him every call imaginable) into realizing that James, if he wins championships with four different franchises at times where they were irrelevant before him, has created a unique and fascinating legacy. You get to notice that his elite rebounding isn't indicative of a PR diva. You get to notice that his handle and passing vision makes him a joy to play with. You get to notice that unlike other dominant players of his era, his teams don't quit and get swept.

> If you are hung up on his team jockeying, it's more the times we live in than LeBron.

You want to know the least relevant common fact ever about Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Gordie Howe and Joe Lewis? None of them ever did steroids. Not because they were moral pillars of the community -- Cobb, I am reasonably certain, was a psychopath who would have been injecting into his eyeballs in the on-deck circle if it meant an edge was achieved -- but because the damn things just weren't available at the time. You don't get to pule for the past without realizing that the people in the past were, well, people, and would have been hyper-competitive as well.

Michael Jordan doesn't get to be considered dramatically "better" than James because he didn't hop teams as much. He played in a different era, where free agency was far less coordinated at the top levels, where teams were simply less willing or able to make their star a de facto GM. Had he been able to do that, he would have. Hell, the man made life miserable for any player he wanted gone in the first place, and tried to de facto GM anyway.

You can like the modern age or not; it's your choice. But you can not be fair to the modern players by denying that the game has changed. Babe Ruth was amazing. He also didn't face black players. Doesn't stop the fact that he was amazing. It just makes comparing him to Willie Mays a lot harder than it would have been otherwise. Besides, um, they were kind of Very Different Players. Same with James and Jordan.

> James chose Philadelphia for minimal money.

That speaks volumes, honestly. The Sixers no longer have a massive Joel Embiid money problem, because they have James to go with him for nearly nothing. The Sixers no longer have a massive Tyrese Maxey minutes problem, because they have James. The Sixers no longer have an auto loss in a playoff series where Embiid isn't 100%, because they have James. It's all transformative.

> It's probably not going to work.

There are 30 teams and only one gets to win. New York won the East by a lot last year and didn't break up the starting unit that did that. Detroit and Cleveland are far more cohesive. Boston has a dramatically better coach. The fan base and media in this town prefer drama and losing to competency and winning. They still don't protect the rim great, don't have a coach that develops and defines bench players, and Win Absolutely Now moves rarely work out.

> It's totally OK to mark out for the guy now.

You know who we used to hate in this town? Bryce Harper. Pete Rose. Jaylen Brown. Moses Malone. 

You know what we were when we cheered for them? Fans. Of the home team. You know, the way that sports has worked for, well, ever.

So if you now want to say James is better than Jordan?

You get to. (By the way, I've been saying that for a long time.)

And here's the moment, in a nutshell, that you can go to. James' signature play? The chasedown block against the Warriors. Massive effort, maximum impact, undeniably great. Jordan's signature play? A pushoff before scoring the dagger against the Jazz.

> Sixers fandom is so much better than where they were three months ago.

The bench makes sense now. They took useful pieces from their adversaries. You are excited to watch them again. And, if for no other reason, home games should become home games again, which I was fairly certain wasn't going to be the case for another decade or two. Which leads me to my final point...

> If you feel you have to pee on someone else's corn flakes about this, that says a lot more about you than the guy dreaming of parades.

Sports is about unrealistic hopes and dreams. It's about the chase, the dream being fulfilled, the enemies vanquished, the relief at something you've hope for actually coming true. What it is not about, or at least isn't to someone with a helpful outlook on life, is telling the people with fresh hope that they are idiots, hypocrites, sellouts, bandwagon jumpers and all of the rest.

James is a Sixer. If you aren't a James fan, but are a Sixers fan, you are now a James fan. Adjust or get new laundry. 

For the record, while I was driving around my area yesterday? I saw a kid with a pristine Ben Simmons Sixers jersey on a bike. And I imagined that the reason why it was pristine was because wearing that made you the object of ridicule forever, but for some reason, he kept it. And yesterday, he got to wear it, because LeBron James is a Sixer, and all of the past trauma of being a Sixers Fan might, just might, go away.

Let's ride.

If you are rich, have the grace God gave a doorknob, and STFU.

So I'm going to write something here that has been stuck in my head for nearly a year and a half, or as long as it's been since the last full-time gig. (The fact that I'm going to write this on my dormant sports blog, rather than my business one, tells you all you need to know about the relative free speech of people looking for work.)

Depending on who you ask, that gig ended with a coding error or management intransigence in the face of a failing practice, and two things can be true at the same time.

Why has this been in my mind, but not on paper, for so long? Short answer: an NDA and continuing desire to have COBRA coverage. Longer answer: cowardice and shame and persistent, self-destructive doubt. When an employer tells you that your words can never be seen (and you are, well, a writer) for reasons that have nothing to do with math, the simplest reasons must be that you are venal, or dumb, or maybe both. Sprinkle in some long-term job search on top of that, and you get a guy that's not getting over it. And not getting over it is... what happens when you self-censor.

I have never, in my professional career, self-censored more than I did while working for an organization whose purpose is to defend free speech. They do this by fighting against compelling speech for people who might not want to redress historical issues involving race and economic class, and by treating the idea that spending money is free speech, because if someone stops you from saying something with your money, that's censorship. There are any number of rhetorical tricks for all of this, but at its core, it's free speech so long as it gives the overwhelming advantage to those who want to believe that history is where you find all of the wisdom, and that taking money from people who want to go back to the Great Old Days where ideas about race and gender and identity (always, natch, of others) is just the hurly burly of the Marketplace Of Ideas.

This absolutism only extends to people who work in the public sector, of course, because the right of the people with money is sacrosanct and yay libertarianism. Fire off letters threatening colleges that no one ever heard of? Your courage and nobility astounds. Note that the Supreme Court is incredibly corrupt and perpetuates the perpetually worsening climate for free speech by treating, well, money as the only speech that matters? You sound partisan, and thereby corrupt, unlike we, the proud eunuchs of free speech who inevitably seem more comfortable hanging out with the rich asshats with the Nazi memorabilia.

A sad little fact you learn from start-ups: you are your money. Take it from stupid or short-sighted people, and you become that. Take it from people with bad taste in collectibles and worse ones in opinions, and the stink is now yours. If all of your customers are assholes, they are buying from one.

And the funny thing about people who need to tell you to presume that they are all of good will, regardless of their actions?

They wind up proving that your presumption of good will, which was always difficult to manage because reality for reality's sake is something of a baseline for cognitive thought?

Was never correct, and proven by actions.

For the record? I'm not sure I'd hire me, either. I have lots of ideas and will make you money, but there's a lot more to life than having good ideas and money, especially if you are super invested in never changing your mind about anything, well, important. Or you find the guys with the Nazi gear fun to hang out with. It must be exhausting to manage me, especially if integrity isn't your jam (and integrity is a nasty little vice, in that it is never very good about obeying the NDA). 

So, free speech?

No one *really* believes in it. Mostly because when you speak to people who will never change their minds about anything, it's all take and no give. And that's not free speech, that's sado-masochism.

In the waning days of World War 2, SS officers would look to surrender to the Americans, because survival. Eisenhower, in a potent act of understanding, would refuse to return the courtesy of a military salute. To him, these men were not soldiers; they were members of a criminal organization engaging in dress-up. The salute was wrong to return, and boy howdy, did those SS officers really hate not getting it returned. Maybe not so much as the nooses that awaited them as war criminals, but similar.

History proves Eisenhower was right to do this. Censoring criminality means you are not aiding criminality. When we refuse to hear the (repetitive, insane, unproductive, dispiriting, etc.) speech of proven bad actors, we are restricting their free speech, and we're doing so for *excellent* reasons.

To the free speech absolutist, this means you are shutting down information and presuming omniscience, as if continuing to hear the bad information could hold no impact. Humans, inevitably, don't work this way. There's music you like and music you hate, and insisting that you listen to the music you hate until you like it is, well, sado-masochism again.

So, no, I don't really believe in free speech anymore. I used to. Then I worked for people who showed me that no one really does, all while holding themselves above all of those partisan scoundrels. Because when one side has to give up its favorite slurs when the other side is in power, it has to be equally as bad as when the other side has to give up autonomy over its body when the sides swap. (No one does both-sideism better than someone who has to tell you how much more free speechier than thou they are.)

What I do believe is in the open exchange of ideas, presuming it's with those of good faith. Which money, privilege and power inevitably corrupts, because t'was ever thus, and good faith goes away constantly, because we humans tend to prioritize our kin over someone else's. We tend to presume that the people in our world with these attributes must have gotten or kept them from some positive factor, and increasingly, well, no. Anyone who has ever made a great fortune probably did it by taking advantage of someone else, especially in certain consumer categories that I don't really need to name, because it's pretty obvious when an enterprise is parasitic. (Funny thing about that? I've worked for obvious parasites in gambling, finance and other hustles, and it felt better than being near the Nazi fans. Just didn't set off my Evil Is Nigh detector.)

Or, shorter?

Free speech for the poor, because they need it. 

Censorship for the wealthy, because they'll impose it on everyone else if you don't.

Money is not speech; money is power. 

And power corrupts, every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

And the only way to call out corruption is... free speech.

Even if it's calling for censorship of the corrupt.

And if you are rich, and don't enjoy being told to STFU?

Go pay someone to listen to you bitch about how unfair the world is.

The Sports Snooze

 Google Analytics tells me this site pulls routine traffic, which either means we're embedded in search engine results from longevity, bots love us, or there is some unspoken deep bond between us, Dear Theoretical Reader, and you keep coming back to read outdated takes about things no one still cares about.

Which makes me feel bad when the site lies fallow for extended peiods of time. Nothing has been said about the past Eagles season (it made me sad because it was a wasted opportunity due to one terrible and indefensible hire and retain, and I'm sorry someone egged your house, Mr. Pitullo, but I'm also certain the attack was less predictable and harder to defend than your offense), the current Sixers season (people who think Joel Embiid is fully back don't watch the games / care about defense, but the rest of the team is adorable and please never trade VJ Edgecombe because he's fun to watch and Giannis Is Not), the last Phillies season (postseason baseball is random and the Dodgers should just play intra-squad games until someone convinces them otherwise, because it's starting to feel Globetrottery). There, that ought to sate the bots for a while.

Having exhausted my hot takes for now, I wanted to pivot to the thing that's happening next Sunday that every last sports blogger, regardless of how often they post, should care about: the Superb Owl. (Your spelling my vary.) This year, I am going to spend the game... driving rideshare and, I guess, listening to it on the radio. Here's why.

1) I just don't hate the Patriots, or love the Seahawks, enough. Yes, Patrihate is eternal and Boston Fan can die in a tire fire (pronounced TIE-ARR-FIE-YAH, provided you can somehow do it for a 10-count), but Seattle is run by the scions of people who once ruined a job I liked a lot, and they also once employed Javedeon Clowney, who concussed Carson Wentz into the wasted career he was always going to have, But Still. I don't care very much. I don't think you should either, unless you are from there and can't help yourselves.

2) I am not financially well off, which means that I no longer get to watch sports. In the great number of ways in which we've ruined life, monetizing every single instance of Live Television means that the second that my laundry is out of consideration, I claw down my TV package, which means that I can't watch the game in my house. Even if I did have the scratch for this, I wouldn't, because watching live sports now means I am making the choice to Not Earn During The Game, and, well, no. This also means that while I appreciate the theoretical offer to come watch it at your place, Dear Theoretical Reader, no. I'll be working. Which the poor get to do for triple and quadruple shifts now, because America.

3) I live in a country that should not feel OK about putting our differences aside and sitting down for a communal event. Tens of millions of us voted, and will continue to vote, for a regime that murders innocents, then defames the still warm corpses, and then tells you what you just saw wasn't murder. They are also on record for raping children, while telling you it wasn't rape and they weren't children and what is reality, anyway, we have money and that's all that matters. Go Team. Or, well, not.

4) The event is about how money is all that matters (buy crypto! Use AI and harm humanity and the planet at the behest of oliogarchs! Gamble on anything! This is what it means to live a fully realized life!), and I'm too old and embittered to think that they are going to change their minds and give me some, because that's not how they roll. Also, if they did, I'd probably ruin it by telling them what I think at some point, and they don't like that, neither.

5) The game, as ingrained as it is in me, needs to die. It's concussions and corruption, random chance and stupidity, and it's oh so good and oh so amazing and no game is boring except the ones that don't feed into nerd gambling. And the only thing more tiresome than the game is people telling you why they don't like it and why you shouldn't either, especially if it's your laundry at stake.

So, mostly passing this year, which is to say, listening to it while working, watching the highlights later when it's free, and pretending to have seen the ads and halftime show so that I don't seem like a poor and bitter old man, while being, of course, that.

Enjoy!