There’s an iconic second within the TV present “Misplaced.” Effectively, there are a handful, however one, particularly, is of the essence with regards to the 2022-23 Philadelphia 76ers. Deep into this system’s dizzying third season, when the solid of characters is off their allegorical island and at some unclear place alongside their complicated space-time journey, the quixotic Jack, struck via at all times along with his crippling hero advanced, has an enormous uncharacteristic beard and a bandage on his brow. With shaking desperation, he tells the sober, pragmatic Kate that they “have to return” to the wrestle they as soon as knew. As she will get in her automotive and leaves the scene, she appears to be like at him with disbelief.
Usually reappropriated as a meme in screenshot or GIF kind, the body and its line of indelible dialogue have come to signify a broader type of nostalgia — typically the doubtful kind, recognized to anybody who’s ever tried to return to their hometown or faculty campus and act the identical they did a long time in the past, solely to be met with frustration and vacancy. With the strikes he’s remodeled the previous a number of months, 76ers’ basic supervisor Daryl Morey could possibly be credibly accused of precisely this type of conduct.
It began with the James Harden commerce — and the loaded airport runway hug that got here with it — however then escalated this summer time as he acquired three extra gamers he as soon as labored with when he ran the Houston Rockets: P.J. Tucker, Danuel Home Jr. and Montrezl Harrell.
Rumor had it that Morey was additionally Eric Gordon in commerce, and for all we all know, he nonetheless may find yourself in Philly. There’s, within the assortment of all these gamers, a particular sense of unfinished enterprise, relocated from the Western Convention 5 years in the past to the Jap Convention now. What Morey’s Rockets didn’t do then, and hope to do now, was epitomized by the ache Harden, Tucker, and Gordon felt simply barely arising quick towards the Golden State Warriors in 2018’s Western Convention Finals.
In Joel Embiid, evidently these dashed desires have discovered a brand new basis. Probably the most bodily imposing gamers the sport has ever seen, Embiid is essentially the most outstanding of lots of the Sixers’ not-former-Rocket deserves; this roster isn’t all simply looking time-machine stuff, however fairly a wedding between that and extra ascendant expertise. There’s Embiid, and there’s the frighteningly fast and prodigious Tyrese Maxey, plus newcomer De’Anthony Melton, a 24-year-old who’s versatile and dynamic at guard. In the course of all of it is Tobias Harris, a stout and productive wingman who’s been marked for an exit so long as Morey’s been round, however stays in place nonetheless.
With out Harris, the roster does theoretically make extra sense: think about the massive bruising frontcourt of Embiid and Tucker, complemented by the jarring distinction of Maxey and Melton’s athleticism, with all of it orchestrated by Harden’s shimmering basketball mind. That’s the concept essentially the most optimistic of Sixers forecasters take note of. And whereas that may find yourself being essentially the most devastating look Philly can provide, the much less romantic reality of Harris’ night-to-night numbers will assist them win common season video games so long as he’s round.
Between Tucker, Harrell and Paul Reed — who must be polished and acquainted sufficient for head coach Doc Rivers to extend his minutes in season three — Embiid additionally has extra ballast behind him at heart than he’s been used to. On paper, the crew is vastly improved, with most of its weaknesses gone. However what’s nonetheless there may be that very same ineffable, ghost-like factor that nagged at Morey and Harden’s Rockets: when it comes right down to it, a sure spirit appears to empty from this crew, virtually no matter who’s on it.
It occurred once more because the Sixers misplaced to an arguably a lot much less proficient Miami Warmth crew within the second spherical of final yr’s playoffs, in an oddly anticlimactic style. Embiid was injured, as he appears to be each spring, however there was extra to the Sixers’ collapse than that. The entire crew limping greater than they have been preventing.
Maybe the inflow of ex-Rockets, charged like Jack after the island to appropriate the previous, may also help to appropriate such listlessness. It’s doable that their reunion might kind a one-last-heist model of cinematic emotional gas, and that Morey has reached backward with a finely tuned stability of harried expertise and recent younger starvation in thoughts. The throughline between the in any other case disparate halves of this Sixers squad is, in any occasion, the shadow of disappointment on the highest phases of the sport, and a need to maneuver out of it. Except Tucker, who received all of it with the Milwaukee Bucks in 2021, this can be a crew united by that burden of proof.
