The Ringer NBA Show - Did the Process Really Lead the Sixers to … This? | The Answer

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

Chris is joined by Ben Detrick from Cookies Hoops to talk about the state of the Philadelphia 76ers and their concerns about the team's future. They wrap everything up by discussing Ben's new book, 'The Joy of Basketball.' (36:51) Hosts: Chris Ryan and Seerat Sohi Guest: Ben Detrick Production Assistant: Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Let's help everybody. I'm JJ John Gistramski. And I'm Jason Gough. And if you haven't heard, the ringer has gone local. I'm bringing the fire. I'm bringing the rain from the big apple with my show, New York, New York. And I'm reping Shottown with my new show The Full Go on All Things Chicago. We've got episodes three nights a week with all the reaction to the local teams and guests.

Plus bonus episodes around all the big games and storylines. So whether you're uptown, downtown, downtown, in the burbs, or a transplant. Make sure you follow New York, New York, and the full go on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Hello and welcome to the Ringer NBA show. It's The Answer. My name is Chris Ryan and I have a special co-host this week. Sir, it's out. But I have my boy, Ben Dietrich, co-author of The Joy of Basketball, Ringer contributor,

the author of Find a New Slant, the Brian Colangelo biography coming in 27 on Norton. Maybe. No? Ben, what's going on? It's quite a resume. Quite a resume. Everything's great. Thanks for being here.

You know, it's getting the gang back together to talk Sixers. What an exciting time. Yeah. I mean, if there's going to be two people talking about Sixers, it's been, it's got to be two people who have really just been there for this administration for the entire time. No, Ben and I come at the Sixers in kind of different ways. Obviously, I'm from Philadelphia. So I'm a little bit emotionally tied up in it.

But Ben, it's kind of your, the Sixers have been like your intellectual project when it comes to the NBA over the last 10 years, right? Yeah, I grew up as a Sixers fan. due to Charles Barkley, Alan Iverson. And then I sort of drifted away when they traded the answer because that was my favorite athlete of all time. He is the founder of the modern NBA. You know, the league started in the summer of 1996, as we all know.

And, you know, it was Sam Hinky getting hired that led me to go back and start paying attention to the Sixers again and rekindled my love for the organization and franchise. So, yes, from Hinky until now, it has been an intellectual project of talking and arguing about the great Philadelphia 76ers. Yeah, so let's talk and argue about it now, because I think that you and I have some things that we share

and some things that we disagree on when it comes to how the Sixers are going about this season, some of which is in their control and some of which is not. And we should obviously have the caveat here where it was like, if we weren't going to talk about the Sixers this week, I don't really know what we would talk about since so many teams are going through pretty severe COVID outbreaks in their franchises today as we record on Thursday morning. It's ripping through the kings, it's ripping through the bulls. I mean, most teams have at least one to two players in health and safety protocols.

It's very likely we're going to see a completely different kind of Christmas Day slate of games where no Janus, no Hardin. Like all those things are in play. The NBA is talking to the NBA Players Association about changing the protocols, changing the testing regimen that they have, changing maybe some of the rules that they have in terms of who players can see when they're on the road. But all that being said, like we can still talk about. about what's going on with the Sixers because I think while they have been obviously impacted by COVID, they're victims of another kind of problem right now. The Sixers lost to the heat last night at home. This was a heat team without Bam, without Jimmy Butler, without one of the Martin brothers,

without one of the Morris brothers. Without Tyler. Without Tyler Hero. And, you know, they guy back in the game. This is a funny thing about being like a kind of over-emotional fan. is that you remember when they're down 20 more than when they get back in it. And there were long stretches of this game that the Sixers played, and they'll have played the Nets on Thursday night. So we're only talking about this heat game. There were long stretches of this game where they didn't even look like they belonged in the same sport with the heat. They were just getting out-coached, out-deafended, out-executed, everything.

It felt like maybe a little bit of a Nadeer for the season. How have you been feeling about them this season? I think you make a great point there. and it's definitely like recency bias to some degree, right? Because they beat the Warriors and Steinmead, you know, Curry's chances at setting the record in Philadelphia. And it was their biggest win of the year. Yeah, not in my house, all that stuff.

Sure. This just happened, right? And everyone's like, told you they're great. And then three days later, like the wheels have fallen off and everything is in shambles. I think this is the problem of being a mediocre team. Like, ultimately that's the issue here. that if you're looking for evidence that they're secretly really good or they're secretly terrible, it's going to be plentiful because they are a 500 team.

They're going to have some big wins. They're going to have some crushing losses. They are a middle of the pack team, maybe a couple games over 500. But when you have some injuries, some COVID protocols, you know, you lose a couple here and there. And all of a sudden, you're a couple games under 500. And I think that's probably going to be the story for the season is hovering around. winning 50% of their games. So we're going to have so much evidence and counter evidence for them being totally fine

and an absolute wreck. I have written in my notes here on uninspiring 500 team that might be getting the sense that the cavalry is not coming. That was better said and more succinct. Well, no. We're exactly, we're exactly in agreement. I think it's just a question of whether or not the cavalry is coming this year.

So obviously the trade deadline is somewhat approaching in about a month or so. and then we have the December 15th was when players who signed with new teams over the summer would be eligible to be included in trades. You saw a little bit more pickup in the Simmons trade rumor factory. There were some stuff about the Spurs. There was some stuff about the Pacers. I saw a Lakers inclusion. I don't know why.

So there's starting to be more chatter. But that being said, you remember Darrell Mori saying two months ago to strap in for possibly years long Ben Simmons standoff because that's how resolute he. and the ownership were that they were not going to be getting 30 cents on the dollar for an all-NBA quality player. And that, you know, like when you say, oh, yeah, get ready for years of this. And then eight weeks later, you're like, dude, this is really bad. I wonder if we're getting into like who blink's first territory at all. Well, I think that's a good point that it's easy to say four years.

And it's much more difficult to spend four years with, you know, one of your best players. just sitting idly by. You're essentially asking people to go through another process there, you know? Like, that's a lot. The process was 20 years. So this is nothing in comparison to the process. But to your point, what Mori said, I do believe him. I think he genuinely believes the Sixers' best opportunity to win a title is to compel

Ben Simmons to come back and play. Now, whether that means he would get traded at a later date, I don't know. But just logically speaking, if you don't have to make a trade and you don't have to tinker with a roster because of an influx of new talent. You're bringing together a team that was the first seed in the East. You have an improved Tyrese Maxi. You have some minor upgrades throughout the roster. And you'd feel pretty comfortable that that team would probably be a contender.

Doing a trade does not guarantee any of those things. So I don't, I believe that Daryl Morey wants to get Simmons back in the fold. I don't know what the actual holdup is. I don't know why Ben Simmons specifically does not want to play for the Philadelphia 76ers to this extent that he is losing millions of dollars incurring the wrath of an emotional fan base being mocked. What is actually the reason that he doesn't want to be there? I don't know that we have the answer to that.

Yeah. And I think that honestly, if I watched the heat game with Ben Simmons the other night, I'd turn to him and I would say, man, they really need you. You're right. You know, like Bill and Jackie were talking about this on Bill's pot earlier in the week. It's like when you look at the Sixers, the hole that they have is a Ben Simmons-sized hole. The contours of a six-foot-10 man who can run like a deer. I don't know.

Who could that shadow be? You know, possibly shut down Gabe Vincent. You know, maybe that's not too much to ask. You know, like that kind of thing. I think you and I have always been what in our conversations like off. outside of like podcasting stuff like pretty pro ben as like a concept as like a player within the sixer system and i weirdly find myself getting a little bit more frustrated watching joel than i ever do getting watching ben and i know that's saying something since ben simmons literally like

became a performance art piece during the the hawk series in the playoffs last season but like you know watching joel and b not score for like the last 15 minutes of the game getting two really ugly looks and a lot of that is down to I don't think a single player on the Sixers knows how to throw an entry pass. You know, I honestly do wonder, they've got coaches for everything and video analysts for everything.

Should they just hire John Stockton to be like, you bend over here and throw the bounce pass to his right hip so that he can continue his... Do you know what I mean? Like there's some basics here that are missing? But yeah, like I kind of still pine for Simmons. But to this exact point,

you know, this roster was built not solely around Joe L&B. It was designed around the contours of Ben and Joe. And they don't have personnel to immediately fill those gaps. As good as Tyrese Maxie has been, and he's like an adorable, exciting, like talented young guy with a lot of upside. He's a very different player than Ben Simmons. You know, he is not the guy that just creates transition opportunities

and creates open threes and brings this, odd mix of speed and size and basketball IQ. This is not a knock on him. He's just a different person. And I don't know how you find those attributes that Simmons offers because, in my opinion, you know, I'm a big Simmons fan. I think he's a great player. I think his scarcity is what makes him so valuable and has such an impact on winning games. There just are not elite shut down perimeter defenders in the NBA. There aren't that many guys who are great facilitators. To have both of them in one man it's you know it's like the what 96 summer jam or however you would put it in yeah rap parlance do you think that um some of what's happening is a bit of an indictment on what

tobias harris is in the NBA right now in terms of you know like there there is a version of this sixers team i think where embede is carrying the weight for most of the game for the first three quarters of the game but his things get a little tighter and maybe he gets a little bit winded you know a perimeter offensive playmaker is able to get his own shot and especially in clutch just like create offense for himself and that's where Simmons has typically become marginalized at the end of games when his foul shooting or is just lack of jump shooting and his lack of ability to space the floor comes into play and then I think this season was like primed for that's what the money is for Tobias like that's why you're paid the way you are and like

yeah you're a third option but this is where you become a second option. What is like the sort of ripple effect of Tobias' style on like the Sixers in general? Well, I think there is a point to be made that the current Philadelphia offense looks surprisingly like the playoff Philadelphia offense when Ben Simmons was ushered out of the half court offense and told to stand in a corner. And he got a lot of blame for that. But you look at the offense now and you're like, it's so weird. That looks exactly like the team when Simmons wasn't given the ball enough. And I was shrieking like a banshee that they need to give bend the ball, clear the floor, and let him attack. And that's where we've seen Maxi do a lot of damage.

So I think in the case of Tobias Harris, he's one of those guys who's always been the same player his entire career. And I don't know if he can step up. I don't know if he's playing significantly worse. He just strikes me as being the same guy always. And at times the jumpers are falling. Sometimes they're not. I don't think he is a great player. I don't think he's a bad player.

Yeah, me neither. I do understand that he is now a target of scapegoating, and there are a lot of people saying, well, it's Tobias. That's the problem. Like, man, this has been the same Tobias that's been on like 27 different teams and kind of put up the same stats his entire career

except for some, you know, hot shooting streaks here and there. So, like, I kind of find him blameless because this is who he is. It's interesting that he's having, at least in terms of perception. I don't have the numbers right in front of me comparing like this to that breakout Clippers year that he was having when, you know, that sort of everybody is abandoned Lob City, but Tobias is here. Clippers team that was kind of a really fun inspirational squad.

But him being at least in pedigree, the best player on that team compared to, I think he's supposed to be, you know, obviously in the current roster construction, the third option on the Sixers team and somebody who can officially get a variety of kinds of offense. be really useful. But when you push him up to two and when you make him the best perimeter offensive player that we've got, then it just becomes like an unfair kind of spotlight goes on. I mean, one thing for him is that he's just shooting really poorly from three. We know he's hesitant to just let it rip, but I think him shooting below his career average from deep is also an impediment to him really letting him fly. So his field goal percentage is right with career averages. He's just missing a lot of jumpers in the way that, you know, he was not doing last year. I don't know if there's a trickle-down effect from Simmons' absence where he's not getting the same looks

in transition because we know Philly can't run at all now. They're 30th in the league in pace. But my upside for Tobias here is that he's a pretty consistent guy, so I would hope that those numbers will edge back up and he'll kind of hit his averages. I don't think he's a like a 31% three-point shooter. I think he's a pretty league average guy across the board. And we kind of joke about him being like net zero. Right. Because he is like right in the middle there of the crosshairs of like, this is the average NBA player.

Like he can do a lot of things pretty well, but none of them brilliantly. And like solid player. Not bad. Expensive for net zero though. The price tag is a little hot. And is he movable? Because that's like, I mean, as we're getting into these, as we're getting into trade season in full, obviously the Sixers are going to be at the forefront of all these

kinds of conversations. and look, like, there's, in my mind, there's the ideal version of this where it's like, Daryl calls you David Griffin and it's just like, you've got a problem, I've got a problem. Simmons for Ingram, let's do it. And I, you know, I don't know whether or not that he's Ingram too duplicative with Tobias in terms of like some of the physical space they occupy, the kind of game that they like to play, is Ingram a quote unquote fit with Embed, I couldn't tell you. But like, Ingram's certainly a more exciting prospect than nothing.

I mean, these are kind of some of the reasons that bringing Ben back into the fold is optimal because a lot of these guys we've talked about as being trade targets that I think most of Sixers Nation would be totally content with. Okay, we got Ingram. He's a good player and a draft pick. Or we got Jalen Brown. Like, great, perfect, let's go. We don't know how they actually work in this ecosystem. And the Sixers have a pretty specific core group there where Embeddied is a post-ISO score. Tobias Harris is a kind of like mid-range to post-ISO-scorer.

Maxi is a mid-range to, you know, at the rim, ISO score. Yeah. Like they don't have a lot of diversity within the existing group. And I think Ben did paper over a lot of those sort of redundancies by being such a weird player that he was deeply unselfish, never shot from the perimeter, was willing to go stand in the corner and let other guys do their thing. But he was a great passer. He set screens. He could catch lock.

and you look at them now and pretty much everyone sort of does the same thing. And if you add an Ingram or a Brown or a guy who is a perimeter-based score, I don't know how they actually change what Philly is doing. They might be just a better version of what we're seeing right now. So do you think that that's Doc's tactical kind of the lack of imagination there? Or do you think that's like this was a team that was built for a very specific roster and it's impossible to conceive of a new way of playing on the fly when you're also thinking any day now we could have like Miles Turner and

Karris Levert walking in the door or Dejanta Murray and Yakopold walking in the door or whatever. Yeah, I think it's a combination of two things. I think Darryl Morey built this team with the idea that Ben and Joe would be there as the pillars and then the rest of it would fit around them in complementary roles, including a Tobias Harris or a Maxi. And whether those guys are playing better than was, anticipated or worse than anticipated, it still may not have changed ultimately the roster composition.

And then Doc is another question where Doc didn't look at last year's composition and use it particularly wisely, in my opinion. So now you basically have a double whammy where you have a roster that's not designed to be used the way that Doc is employing it, but it's also not even designed to be used in its current form because you're missing a key piece. I'm not drawing any conclusions off of body language or post-game. comments. Doc says is usually pretty candid and is also

will stick up for his guys when he has the opportunity to do so. I do think that he was pretty withering in his critiques of the Sixers against the Heat. I think the Sixers themselves were also pretty self-flagellating. But like I kind of feel like they're nowhere but in between. They're playing as if they have Ben Simmons

but they don't have Ben Simmons. All these guys who are essentially the second dude off the bench are now thrust into much more high exposure roles. And I'm just not sure what the path forward is because this is and you know you mentioned the process in the beginning of the podcast this is kind of like the exact place the process was supposed to avoid arriving back at the idea that you would be mired in the middle wasting the prime of a

generational talent and have like no like tactical identity have no like direction and I I'm not saying like there's nothing about more more he's going to do it like I do what he's going to do but it is kind of jarring to be at 500 and watching a heat team that is able to get by without a starting lineup. It's just like Kyle Lowry and the replacements and they still look like the heat. That's a good point. I don't believe necessarily in the idea of a team identity as like an aesthetic, but from a strategic standpoint, I'm with you 100%. Because what is this Philly team?

You know, last year they had a mediocre offense, but were, you know, basically fractions of point, you know, off of being the best defense in the NBA. Like, that's what they were. They were a defensive-oriented team who had enough talent on offense to put together wins. Cool. We get it. Earlier this year, they were reigning threes. And it's like, oh, it's a new thing. They're a three-point shooting team that doesn't play defense.

And now you look at the offense as stagnant as it is, and you sort of go through and you see what they're good at. And you're like, okay, they don't turn the ball. over. That's, that's, that's good. They get to the line a pretty good amount now. Okay, that's great. But the rest is just offensively and defensively. It's just so middle of the pack. I think looking at this team, you might say, we can be a good offensive team with this existing personnel, but we're not going to be able to defend or we can do vice versa. I just don't know that they can be good at both things simultaneously. As we've said early on, I mean, it just strikes me as like this is the conundrum of a mediocre team.

Right. You can be okay at something and slightly okay at something. And that neutral buoyancy ends up with you winning 41 games. You know what drives me crazy? I remember going into the Hawks series last season in the postseason and feeling, I mean, even though that there were some, obviously some bad signs coming out of the Wizards series, namely Joelle getting hurt on that dunk attempt. I was like, you know what?

Ben's going to put Trey in hell. Like the Knicks, they think the Knicks are good at defense. Like, they're going to really, like, just lock them up. And this is going to be the, maybe we'll see how far this, like, hard-nosed defensive team can get in the playoffs. What makes me mad is that that, that version of the Sixers would be perfect for this season, would be perfect for this slightly more physical, slightly more permissive NBA season where it's like, oh, maybe, like, maybe you could just wipe Trey out.

out of a playoff series this year if they're not going to be calling as many contact files. I mean, think of how many fouls both Simmons and Thibel got for, you know, being a little extra physical on the perimeter, not only against the Hawks, but throughout their whole season. And right, if you had both of those guys, you know, running around the perimeter, bullying the shit out of guard. We're getting in people's space when they're trying to shoot threes. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know that, I don't know that the, that Tray Young has this. I mean, Trey was incredible in the playoffs. but I don't know that he's going to have the same experience if the Hawks go back. I mean, I thought Philly's defense in that series was fine. It was that the offense just, you know, totally went off the rails. You know, there was a little blog post I put on on cookies hoops.com before last year's playoffs.

And I was kind of discussing the changes that Doc had implemented since the All-Star break and how they were ominous. They were fixable, but ominous. And they were kind of the stuff that we saw. And I'm not here claiming to be like a sage. I'm just saying that they were, parent and then the same things kept happening. And they were a lot of the things that we're seeing this year. It was, you know, Joe moving further away from the, from the basket and taking

a lot of jumpers, Tobias increasingly becoming less of a catch and shoot guy and more of a on-ball kind of playmaker or his version of that. It was the minimization of Simmons. So like, I thought there were some real warning signs about Doc strategy last season that, you know, came to fruition in the playoffs. Ben was scapegoated, but I, and people thought that, you know,

moving on from him, if they bring someone else in, it would cure those offensive woes perhaps. But to me, this is really, it's really a strategic error on the part of, of Doc and whoever is responsible for,

for their offensive strategy. I also don't love the fact that like, and I don't know if, if that many other fans feel this way. I mean, like, this Ty Lou only coaches one team. There's only so many, places where a coach seems to be able to completely revise what his approach to a game is based on either what he's seeing from the opposition on any given night or the personnel he has available to him.

But the fact that this is now two seasons of this team insisting on having Embed start and then having a bad approximation of Embed come into the game and not ever going into some sort of like, let's play small. Let's see what happens when we get out there and spread the floor and, confuse a team or have a second unit that has like a different identity than the first and you know drummond's been fine like i don't really have that many complaints i i'm glad i didn't have to like watch him as like my key player like if i was in detroit it would be a tough tough beat but like i just don't even know why why he's playing i don't know why he's on the roster i understand that there's like the need for a backup center but like if it came to that like backup centers are getable especially in the buyout market and stuff like i i just don't understand this

We're devotion to like there's got to be an enormous big man parked in the middle of the floor for Doc's teams to like even turn the engine over. I mean, last season, Darrell Mori was publicly pleading for them to put Simmons at the Five. Yeah. He said it and he he was polite enough to say if Doc so chooses, he could use Simmons at the Five. And he said this publicly several times. So I would presume he mentioned it internally. I imagine. A couple times every now and then.

but he also had a quote and I don't know if he was specifically talking about Doc but it happened around the same time. It was on, I think it was a psychology podcast that I listened to. Of course. And he said, you can tell a lot about the culture of a sport

by the way that you're comfortable losing. And I think that is applicable to Doc. Again, I'm not implying that he was speaking about Doc, but just theoretically, if you are someone who says, no, Dwight Howard has to be the backup, Drummond has to be the backup. You are saying I'm comfortable losing

in a way that fits with my world vision. It's that a huge center is anchoring our defense and if we lose that way, I'm fine with it. And I think Doc's major flaw is that he doesn't experiment with things that seem promising.

You know, even last year, if you looked at a lineup constructed of Simmons, Joe, Matisse, and Green, he would say, that's their four best defensive players. They could, you could, you could probably try to do something with that quartet. They only played like a handful of minutes

and they're only in highly situational late game situations. Yeah. Scenarios. Yeah. And this year's same deal. He's not playing Matisse and Green together at all. They're basically running a platoon for like their defensive oriented wing. If you looked at their numbers from last year,

the Sixers were great when those two players were on the court with one guard and like Joe. It was great. And he just doesn't do it. So this really rigid, like, stratifying of the roster into, you know, here are my starters. Here are the backups. The backup is going to be a somalachrum of the starting lineup with a hulking big. You also don't get much information about how other guys could play together. You don't get interesting looks.

And as a fan, that's frustrating. Because, you know, I want to see information on interesting lineups. Like, let's go crazy. So really, when he said, I'll use drummond and a beat, I'm like, you know what? I disagree, but at least you're talking about doing something different. Also, if there's any fan base with the capacity to lose in interesting ways, it's the Sixers. All Sixers fans would probably prefer one night going out and watching a weird small lineup get tagged, you know, or watching, you know, a weird end-of-game lineup that we hadn't seen before because he wants to see what it looks like,

let's say if Simmons comes back or they get some sort of reinforcements in a trade for They say what you wanted about Brett Brown, but Brett Brown was willing to experiment and he ditch stuff that didn't work. You know, that was, I think, a very beneficial part of his, like, coaching perspective was, I'm going to try different stuff. And if it's a calamity, you will not see it again. And Doc, on the other hand, is like, that didn't work. The players must have screwed up. I'm going to run it back out there again. Yeah.

Ah, they screwed up again. Guys, will you get this right? because I believe that we should be playing, you know, Simmons, Thibald, and Dwight Howard together. In my mind, that's going to work. So when it doesn't work, well, that's on you guys. Have you seen anything this season from Embed despite the fact that he obviously, I think he took a knee knock, like in the third or fourth game and played through it for the most part. He's missed a little bit of time, missed time with COVID, has talked about having some,

taking a little while to come back from that and how he was feeling. but, you know, I think that the Bucks are a beautifully constructed roster and have been able to weather like, you know, a bunch of guys getting good on that team and going off to find fortune elsewhere and then still being able to replenish the team with your Grayson Allens and your whoever's. But there is a perception that the Bucks are like, you know,

that Yonis can at any moment just throw them on his back and run up a mountain with them. And I think that's my one-ambi thing. It's like watching him, especially at the end of games, I feel like I see his game deteriorate a little bit. And I was curious whether or not you had felt like watching Mbid, especially Mbid being a solo mission this year, had changed your feelings on him at all,

not like as like whether you love him or not, but like what you think he's capable of accomplishing. You know, I think numbers have shown Mbid can be a really effective closer if you believe that a team needs that guy. You know, you go back a couple seasons ago, he was among the league leaders in late game scoring, fourth quarter scoring, hyper-efficient, and got to the line even more than normally.

Like, he was great in that role. I do think Joe really has that mama mentality a bit too much. Like, Joe wants to take that final shot. He wants to be the man. And, you know, I don't begrudge that feeling. But when we talk about Joe not seeing the floor, you know, as a passer sometimes, and he doesn't see the schemes, I don't really think that's necessarily true because he's a really cerebral dude.

I think Joe wants to carry that weight. and I'm not framing this as selfishness or as, you know, anything negative. He really wants to be that guy to take the final shot. You know, it's the Jordan instinct. He wants to be that dude. And I think he could trust his teammates more. And, you know, like there are guys who are on the court with him who are very good shooters. That's why they're one pass away when he's in the post.

And you'll see sometimes when, like, you know, Seth's, Seth Curry's man will come running at him and Joe will see him and spin the other direction for a, you know, a fadeaway 16 footer. Yeah. Joe knows where that doubles coming from. He's like, oh, shit. I want to shoot this jumper. I don't want to quickly, you know, kick it over to Curry,

who has a wide open three, despite him being one of the best three-point shooters out there. Again, I think this is a guy who wants to absorb the burden of being a superstar and the franchise centerpiece and a hero. And I'm trying my best not to frame it as a negative attribute. But I do think, you know, Joe. those reluctance to trust guys around him is part of the problem with some of these fourth quarter situations. Well, it's the same thing, right? It's like, which ways are you comfortable losing?

Like, Embed took two game deciding shots for the tie or for the win, or it was right when the game was close. And I would not call them like good shots at all. And I think one was the top of the key three and one was a lunging kind of look for a bank shot off the post. And, you know, would he be more comfortable? executing a set and getting like a clean look for someone like Danny Green or or Seth Curry in those situations or is it better to clear out for a maxi and do a drive and kick like you know what I mean like is there a more effective offense at various points in that game rather than just feed the big man he'll take us to Valhalla

right it's a it's a fine line between saying I'm going to accept responsibility and carry this team and saying you're doing too much yeah and I think he treads that line sometimes. And, you know, I think when they've run into trouble in some playoff series, it's when they've had really good defenders on them, guys that he has not been able to, you know, just shove under the basket, like talking Mark Gassol, Al Horford, even Clint Capella last time. And Joe still, to his credit, wants to be the guy to win that game for you. But, you know, look at LeBron. He makes the pass. LeBron makes that pass. Even, you know, when KD, when he was playing against the Bucks,

they would run a double at him, he would pass over to, you know, Joe Harris. Like, I think Joe needs to sit here and say, wait a minute, like, I may not be able to do this by myself. Sure. Let me become a threat as a passer, which in turn will prevent those doubles from coming, you know, with like teeth-beared in the way that they do now. If you had to, like, go on the record, do you think in two months this will be looking like a much different Sixers roster and that they are going to try and optimize or maximize or max- maximize this Embed prime window without throwing away a season essentially. Or do you think, could you see a world in which Mori and Doc go to Embed and say, like, look, like, this is going to have to be an offseason thing. We'll make another run at Lillard. We'll make a run at Beal,

whatever. But like maybe if you twist an ankle, take a week off, you know, that kind of thing. And let's see if we can get a better. They have their pick. Yeah, right. I mean, I don't, the idea of tanking would be like almost, I don't think that you could get that across the line. but do you see changes coming is basically my question. Well, my spiciest possible take here. And I would not put money on this. It's just a spicy take. Okay.

Is that I think, I think, I think Doc will be gone before Ben Simmons. That's my spicy take. Tell me why. So we were talking earlier about the obstacles to Ben Simmons return and that being likely a best case scenario unless all of a sudden Dame Lillard is back up. the trade market. You know, a superstar has arrived and they're ready to do a swap. So far, we have not heard of that being the case or an option.

So barring that happening, if you can get Ben back, what would be the road to making that occur? There are plenty of candidates for why he doesn't want to be in Philadelphia. Maybe it's the fans. Maybe it's the media. Maybe it's Joe. Maybe it's Daryl. I don't know.

But if I was going to put a bet on something, it would probably be his relationship with Doc. he was the variable. Doc came in. Ben was minimized in the half-court offense. He was, you know, Doc said that he wasn't sure. Ben was a championship point guard. They had a confrontation in practice. Like, all arrows kind of point at Doc here as being a sticking point.

Again, no insight. It might be everything. Doc might not even matter. But if Doc is the issue, the major obstacle to Ben returning, we're already seeing fans turning on Doc. You know, search his name on Twitter and you will see. You can find anything on Twitter. I mean, you don't see a lot of stuff that's nice about Doc.

No, you're never, you don't see a lot of like, I'm so glad we have the steady hand of Doc Rivers guiding us through the storm here. You're right. Right. So in my opinion, you know, if there is a rising sentiment within the organization, perhaps from the fans and media, the doc might not be the right guy to guide this team through the storm. And that coincidentally dovetails with being,

opening a door for Simmons to potentially return. Like, this is your, like, your glowing object that when you open up the treasure chest, and you're like, here it is. The solution to all of our woes is we get a blood sacrifice for the fans. And then we can, and Ben can then come waltzing back through the door in three weeks. but won't be blamed for canning doc? Like, this is our, this is the magic bullet. I love this take.

I do wonder whether or not given the, how leaky this whole situation has been in the first place, wouldn't we have heard by now that the whole thing is doc? I said it was spicy. No, it is spicy, but I'm like, I'm just interrogating it. You know, it's just like, this is how we do it. But I'm just like, if that was, if that was the holdup, I think that would have come out by now.

Like, he gets along with Daryl, you know, Daryl's always been a straight shooter with him. Things are reparable with Joel. He's already buddies with Toby, all this stuff. It's just about Doc. You know, I mean, I don't think that necessarily they would can Doc to repair a relationship with a guy that they would then try to trade for an all-NBA player, this first opportunity they got.

But I do think that we just would have known that by now. And also, a big part of this is ownership. They handpicked Doc. They gave him a five-year deal worth eight. million dollars a year. He's a year and a half into that. We're talking about fabulously wealthy men, but that's $30 million for Doc not to coach your team and admitting that you made a poor hire. It's going to take some real pressure exerted for those guys to make that kind of dramatic reversal on a move that they made recently. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think that's thoroughly discovered. Is there

any of their Sixers stuff that's been burning up your mind besides the Doc outtake? The Doc Magic bullet. Explains everything, man. They just released the Kennedy documents. Anything's possible. Why do you think Drummond is on this team? It's what is dock bait. Let's talk for a second about the book before I let you go.

You and Andrew Quo have this book out. It's called The Joy of Basketball. It's available wherever you can, people typically find books. I imagine online retailers, et cetera. Is it available in any particular like actual brick and mortar stores that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you're in New York, it's at places like the Strand or McNally Jackson.

and books are magic, Word, green light. If they sell books, they should have it. Cool. Okay. And it's also, yeah, it's available online, but I know from people in other cities, you know, it's at Powell's and et cetera. It should be where you buy books. If you're in Portland or New York City, you could get it.

It should be everywhere. I believe I've been told that it's everywhere. What made you guys want to do this? Because it's basically like this basketball almanac that's partially, it's got some biographical portraits of, of historically relevant NBA figures. It's got some essays on concepts,

but it's essentially, you know, assembled like a basketball almanac. Was it coming from, like, and joy of basketball is obviously a cool title for a book, but did you want to specifically focus on things that made you guys feel joy about the sport? I think it was joy, but also trying to focus what we believe

should be appreciated about the sport. Yeah. And in our viewpoint, that's not necessarily owners, or fans or media. It was like, let's recognize these players and they are, they're magicians. They're so good at this sport that we love.

And the idea that Anthony Bennett is a loser. I'm like, I disagree. That man was taking first overall in NBA draft. What a king. This guy is incredible. That's incredible. He's better than anyone you've ever met at your life at basketball

that we all have played our entire lives. And this guy was the first guy from his entire graduating class. Incredible. But it was kind of reframing the NBA through the lens of Andrew and I. And a lot of the content came from our podcast and conversations we'd had. So when we were kind of figuring out what was going to be in the book, it was more putting a list together of things we wanted to include than even needing to discuss what was actually going to be said. Because we already knew where the other one lies. And I did all the writing and Andrew did all the art and he did all the captions on his artwork as well.

but we also knew what the other person was going to do almost inherently. So it was a really fun project that we were able to do during, you know, the first part of the pandemic versus, say, like, Omicron era. Pandemic 1.0. Yeah. Did you, what was the cutting room floor like? What kind of, did anything get left out that you had sort of toyed with? But then we're like, you know what, this doesn't fit with the aesthetic of the book or the overall kind of structure of it?

Well, a lot of things were combined because, you know, this is our, first book. And we had wildly ambitious ideas early on that we were going to include, you know, every single player who's run on an all-star team, every guy who's ever won any major award. And then you just start running out of real estate really quickly. Yeah. And at first, it seems like this, you know, oceanic expanse of pages. Like, we can put anything in here. And then you're like, look, the Brad Miller entries got to get combined, you know, with, with, I don't know, someone else. Because Brad Miller just can't have a whole page. And dedicated to him with an illustration of Brad Miller.

Like, it's just not happening. Well, it's an amazing book. It's an amazing book to hold and to look at it, like, the quality. Like, I know this is stupid, but like the stock, the paper stock is awesome. Like the illustrations are beautiful. The writing is fantastic. If you love basketball, this is something to give yourself. If you have somebody in your life that loves basketball, it's an amazing holidays gift, I think.

It's not quite a stocking stuff, right? I think it would take up most of the stocking. But it's an awesome book. I just want to say, like, Andrew is such a gifted artist. And, you know, you're familiar with Andrew from when you were back in New York. Yeah, sure. He's done fine art for a mobbero contemporary. He's with Broadway Gallery now.

And he's been working for the Times doing illustrations there. And, you know, working with him is such a treat because his visual language is brilliant and so fine-tuned and so unique to what Andrew does that people look at the book and like, this looks so great. Congratulations. I'm like, thank you. The words are beautiful, aren't they? Yeah.

Well, I know. I love, obviously, I'm a huge fan of your writing. So that goes without saying that Ben did a great job as well. Ben, thank you so much for joining us today on the answer. We were produced by Chris Sutton. And we are going to be taking the next couple of Fridays off, but you can find tons of ringer MBA stuff on the feed and also on Bill's feed and on the mismatch feed where KOC is also doing a pod now on Wednesdays.

So thanks so much for listening. And thanks so much to Ben,