Don’t Be Surprised When Ben and Joel Stop Carrying the Sixers Shield
In a season full of long, tiring and frustrating days, the Sixers just had their biggest. They somehow didn’t even need to play a game. Yesterday was such a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day that Sixers fans should remember it for summers to come.
Each year now, the summer shape shifts the dynamic of the league. Star players leave. They form new duos and super teams. Teams once thought to be title contenders can turn to lottery contenders overnight. The Sixers for the most part have avoided these seismic shifts, because they were starless. But now, the Sixers have not one but two bona fied stars that are just now on the cusp of their primes. They have the ability to not only be the faces of Philadelphia sports but the NBA as well. Those two stars can leave. Don’t give me that they’ve gotten contract extensions; you know how this goes in the NBA. They can leave and if they choose to, Philadelphians cannot be mad. Just remember yesterday’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
When Sixers ownership, specifically Josh Harris requested that employees take a 20% pay-cut during the NBA work stoppage, it showed what we’ve consistently seen since their purchase of the team: they only care about profits. Except this time, it wasn’t just a simple jump on ticket prices, it was toying with human lives. Now in a pandemic where people have become financially desperate, their greed has reached its apex.
In stepped Joel Embiid to save the day, donating $500,000 for COVID-19 medical relief and working towards ways to supplement Sixers employee’s incomes. After the turmoil caused by the front office, Ben Simmons disassociated himself from the team, deleting all 76ers related information from his social media pages.
It’s ironic that Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid take the brunt of the negative headlines given they are the only positive light around the team. Time after time, those two bail this team out of bad PR situations both on and off the court. If you think the fit between Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons on the court is the biggest problem plaguing this team, you aren’t paying attention. There’s a culture problem, and it starts at the top. Ben and Joel are the shield that protects a franchise that otherwise has been a disaster in a multitude of aspects.
Every one of them in that lengthy ownership group, including Michael Rubin should be ashamed of themselves. It took Joel Embiid having the decency and humility to take this issue upon himself in order for exorbitantly wealthy billionaires to realize how wrong their profit driven agenda was. As for Rubin, yeah he was upset the Sixers instituted this plan? Who the fuck cares. What were we supposed to do? Use promo code: COVID-19 on Fanatics.com so Sixers employees could feed their families this next month? As always, Joel Embiid had to bail them out and be a ray of light.
We’re living in a time where people are showing their true colors. The front office showed theirs. The combination of Ben and Joel showed another set. There will come a day the division between the two groups becomes too much to bear. Don’t be mad at Joel and Ben if they leave when it does.