I went out of my way with him to pretend the Sixers were a real threat, even picked them over the Celtics one year although I didn’t believe that, but he’s gone anyway.
Did anyone ever rank Luck above Brady? I can see one year when that was a possibility (2014, when he led the league in TDs) but his entire career was pretty blah otherwise. I know he was the next big thing and Colts fans were pretty excited, but he was never close to Brady, and while I like to rip on Embiid as much as anyone, Luck was never remotely on his level either.
Chris Simms had this weird bug up his ass about Brady for most of his career:
Tom Brady had two Hall of Fame careers, his first 10 year, when he won three Super Bowls, and his last
He had 3 HOF careers. 2000-2006 when he won 3 super bowls (Aikman), 2007-2013 when he won 2 MVPs and got to 2 super bowls (Marino) and 2014-2022, when he won another MVP and won 4 more super bowls (Montana). GJGE, Chris Simms.
Seeing how much Philly fans hate Horford is one of the few things that can bring me joy and peace these days.
It obviously is looking bad but their offseason was about as good as possible wi the going the cap space route. There was a world where PG signs with the Clippers and none of those role players take the discount they did or take those discounts for a true contender. I suppose the results this year couldn’t really be any worse but the what ifs would have been staggering.
Morey definitely made the best of a bad situation, but he also got them into that situation in the first place.
The bold has been said a lot (I've definitely posted the same), but was it really? It's not some terribly bad luck that has Paul George missing so much time, or Embiid's knee being far worse off than they hoped. Why do we assume that giving Paul George a max contact from ages 34-37 was a good idea, when he missed an average 25+ games per season from ages 29-33? Why do we assume that giving a 3 year max extension to Joel Embiid was a good idea, when Embiid missed half of last season (and never being healthy or available when it mattered in the past) and he was already signed for two more years? It's always a huge risk building a team as top heavy as Philly, doubly so when 2/3 of the big money guys are in their 30s and as injury prone as any all-star not named Kawhi. These moves were no-brainer great moves in a 2K world with injuries turned off, and where age and injury related declines are gradual. Their entire plan was a massive risk, just because there was a theoretical title ceiling doesn't mean he made the right moves along the way.
I’m not sure they really had any choice. If Embiid is toast, so are they. They need to roll the dice and try and make the best of these next 3-4 years of Embiid. It’s not looking good but i’m not sure what the plausible alternative was.
Thank you. 110% agree. The Embiid extension was completely unnecessary & Ballmer saying no thank you was a huge red flag on PG.
What's crazy is that at 5-15, they are only 1 game back in the loss column of the play-in. The bottom of the East is really bad. It might only take low-30s to get there. To get to 35 wins they'd only need to go 30-32 the rest of the way. Obviously, .500 is significantly better than how they've been playing to date, but still.
I was telling someone a few weeks ago, it may have even been here, that I think we’ll see a sub-30 win team in the EC play-in.
The EC is rotten. There was some happy talk in the pre-season about the EC being better this year.
Number of NBA games Paul Pierce had played on 12/05/2000 after being stabbed 11 times on 09/25/2000 was 18.
If you showed me his MRI I'd have a much more useful answer.
Has Joel been draining the knee? getting Synvisc injections, yet?
If I was a Sixer fan I would be furious that he played in the Olympics. Glad that he got to win something as a starter on a team, because that ain’t happening in the NBA, but man does that decision seem stupid
True, although it's looking like the damage might have been done at that point already.
TL/Oden are in a different category as they (especially Oden) never got to have a prime due to injury. The common injury comparisons to Embiid seem to be guys like Blake Griffin and Amare Stoudemire...neither were quite as good as Embiid, but we did get to see how good both could be, made about a half dozen all-star and all-NBA teams each, then were done as quality players by age 30 due to multiple injuries. I wonder if at least in terms of the impact injuries have had (and will have) on their careers if Kawhi isn't a decent comp. Both got about as close as you can get to the top (MVP for Embiid, multiple finals MVPs for Kawhi) and for both I feel like we've seen the best they can be, but there should have been more of it.
Griffin is a good comp, even if he never hit those heights. He kept playing as his knees deteriorated, but he just kept diminishing.
I often think of the bullet we dodged in that draft. I remember being so disappointed that the ping pong balls didn't fall our way because of the huge drop-off after Oden and KD in that draft class. Imagine if we wound up with Oden instead of Ray Allen and possibly KG.
I know everyone jokes about it and it doesn’t really affect the Celtics as I feel we control our own destiny against anyone…..but should they get Embiid, George and Maxey healthy for the play-in they are going to be a problem for some other teams.
Fun Celtic-related bit from that draft. The 3rd overall pick, taken right after Durant, was our much-beloved Average Al Horford!
A two-man draft, they called it. We called it, here in the Port Cellar, at the time. We "had the 5th pick in a two-man draft".
darn, I was planning on having a Merry Christmas, now we have to worry about the big, bad 76ers
oh c'mon you know what HRB meant, he was careful to exclude the Celtics.
The Celtics play the 76ers on Christmas Day.
"Could" reach a "point"? The only question will be whether they take the Sixers in 5 or 6 games.
Yes but much like Ron Borges and Bill Belichick once upon a time, the seasons may change but one thing we can always rely on is trolls like Perk and Wright picking against the Celtics in order to rile people up, regardless of the sporting merits. It's like a rite of spring, a sign that all is right again with the world.
Yeah, I was thinking the narrative would be that PHI is playing at a 50-win pace since they went 5-15 and Embiid is playing like a MVP and the Cs can't match up to them.
“The Sixers have the best player in this series, and, honestly, they have three of the best four. And maybe even four of the best five with that rookie I forget his name. Talent wins out.”
