by Christian Colclough (8th)
With the baseball season winding down and the football season starting up that also brings out some of the wildest, funniest, craziest, and most involved fans of all time. Nba season. With the National Basketball Association comes so many wild record breaking moments. Today we’re going to look at the Philadelphia 76ers and the mess they’ve had since James Harden came along.
Recap
As a school in Pennsylvania who has one NBA team, I think everyone knows at this point the things that have been going on with the 76ers. James Harden hasn’t shown up to training camp and all preseason games involving the 76ers franchise. He has been slandering the 76ers name and image. At a training camp interview 76ers MVP center Joel Embiid was asked why James Harden wasn’t there and his all, Joel said “I don’t know. Maybe he had something important.” Which is ironic because James said he was taking care of his mom in Houston
Access Denied
As of before the first game of the 76ers debut against the Milwaukee Bucks minutes before the team flight the security guards of the 76ers private jet stopped James and said he didn’t have access to enter the plane and that we couldn’t play the first game. Which for James is very rare because it seems like he doesn’t want to play any games unless he has a max contract or being traded to a different team entirely. Instead of playing the game Harden was sent to the training facility and put to completely mandatory training drills until he was allowed clearance and the green light to play games which if I am not mistaken was the third or fourth game at the earliest.
Bearded Trade
It was recently announced that James Harden has been traded to the Los Angeles Clippers and with a three-way trade with the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Clippers received James Harden, P.J. Tucker and Filip Petrusev. The 76ers received Marcus Morris, Robert Covington, Nic Batum, KJ Martin, a 2028 unprotected first-round pick, two second-round picks, a 2029 pick swap and an additional first-round pick from the Oklahoma City Thunder, certain sources have told ESPN.
Moving steps into a contender
As someone who watches basketball and football a lot I know a lot of the terms, like contender or re-build. Personally I have a few opinions about the sixers being a contender. I know what everyone says, which is give Joel the ball and get people to support him. Which personally I feel like is the exact opposite of what they should do. They could trade Joel for another point forward and build around Tyrese Maxey. He’s a skilled three year player, that is a playmaker, but also could step up in big moments of the game. Then you could use at least one of the unprotected picks and trade that for defense since their defense is always a reliability. Even though Joel Embiid is what some people say in his prime injuries are derailing his career.
Conclusion
Although I’m not a fan of any Philadelphia sports teams, they are in my top 5 and I can tell that whenever a Philly team is doing good, they somehow just blow it. It’s hard being a Philly fan which I can tell because a lot of people I know are. Although if they enter a rebuilding stage now I feel like they’d have a better chance in the future which would boost their money, revenue, and popularity.
Image citation:
James Harden. 7 Nov. 2023. The Sporting News, https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/news/grading-james-harden-clippers-debut-stats-knicks/3868317a86594b6d80f06657.