Bill Simmons Is Betting On The Sixers To Make It To The NBA Finals And I Despise It

Let me preface this article by saying I love Bill Simmons. He is my favorite sports writer and he should be an inspiration to any young person trying to make it big in sports media. If you aren’t up to snuff with the Bill Simmons Wikipedia page, he started his own website , BostonSportsGuy.com (sounds a lot like phillyfanlife.com) and parlayed that into a gig at ESPN. Before he spit in their face and was pushed out, he helped create the 30 for 30 series, which we all love. From there, he was hired by HBO and created The Ringer. This is a sports blog, and he is a legend in the field.



Unfortunately, since he is “Boston Sports Guy”, we as Philly fans have been pitted against him a lot lately. The 76ers and the injury plagued Celtics are on a collision course in the second round of the NBA playoffs and the Eagles and Patriots played each other in the Super Bowl. And we won. We won the Super Bowl. As you can imagine, a Boston sports homer like Simmons has been leading the charge in smiting Philadelphia sports and has been a figurehead in trashing The Process compared to the Celtics rise. Until now:

If you want the Sparknotes from the podcast, the stunning gambling wager was Simmons taking the Sixers at 7:1 odds to make the NBA Finals. Before we get to that “stunning reveal”, Simmons and Cousin Sal admit that they took the Sixers under at 42.5 games. At this point he goes into the most “I don’t watch the Sixers and I’m too stubborn to give them a chance” rant of all time. Joel Embiid can’t stay healthy, Ben Simmons (who he swooned over at LSU) can’t shoot, the Celtics won the Jayson Tatum/Markelle Fultz trade…basically all the bull shit that every talking head spewed to you all year, all wrapped up into one rant that surprisingly did not get interrupted by a  ZipRecruiter ad. Just like that, all the pro-Celtics/anti Sixers, backhanded compliments to the Process he had and now he is ready to bet it all on us being the first non-Lebron Eastern Conference team to make the NBA Finals in seven years. Bandwagon is full but you can try to run behind it.




I’ll give him credit, the logic behind the wager actually makes complete sense, the stars have once again aligned for a Philly sports team. The Sixers will most likely lock up the 3 seed and play either the Bucks or Heat with home court advantage. Past that series, they get Bill’s ailing Celtics. If they get to the Eastern Conference Finals, they draw Lebron (where home court advantage would belong to Philly) or a beatable Raptors team. On top of that, Simmons mentioned they stellar play of our Simmons, the return of Embiid, the development of our bench with the acquisitions of Marco Bellinelli and Ersan Ilysova coupled with Markelle Fultz being alive and the fact we just can’t fucking lose lately. I may be slightlyyyy biased but that is where I would put my money too.

It’s a smart bet, but I still hate it. I hate that NBA fans around the country trashed us for four years and dismissed Hinkie’s strategy as ludicrous because it was something new and different. Now, as we sit at 50 wins, the Philadelphia 76ers are America’s sweetheart. Seems like every NBA fan nowadays knew all along that The Process would payoff. Well shit, if everyone was so adamant that this would work, Sam Hinkie would probably still have a job, wouldn’t he? Look, I didn’t talk myself into KJ McDaniels being a key role player on a competitive Sixers team for Boston fans to jump ship and join The Process bandwagon. If you were gung-ho on thinking Danny Ainge fleeced our front office for Jayson Tatum, you made your bed and you gotta lie in it. I went all in on a novel idea that being horrible makes you better, and it actually worked out. There were a lot of times (any time Jahlil Okafor was put in a pick and roll situation) that I thought it wasn’t going to work out. Until it did. The best part of any climb to the top is the road you had to take to get there. With the Eagles, what a ride it was and everything we endured along the way made it worth it. With the Sixers, we ran a 26.2 mile marathon. Bill Simmons scoffed at us when the gun went off, hopped on a bus and then got off to cross the finish line with us like he ran it too. It’s a smart bet and it’s his money on the line, but this is our moment.

Here is Joel Embiid trashing the Boston Celtics:



Oh, and if you think Donovan Mitchell is the Rookie of the Year over Ben Simmons, I seriously question your mental stability.

By Aidan Powers | April 9, 2018