One Day Till Sixers: We In Here

Days before the 2010 season, I wrote that the first reason you should watch the Sixers is because "Willie Green is no longer on the team." That was four years ago! FOUR. Game of Thrones premiered just one year after Bill G. played his last game for the Sixers. I thought that game was televised on PRISM, but holy hell, that was just four years ago.

Lot's changed. Doug Collins. Evan Turner. Mikki Moore. Cronuts. Vine. Etcetera.

And 18 months ago, Sam Hinkie took over a roster going absolutely nowhere, and the only player left from that menagerie of mediocrity is a dead-footed Jason Richardson, who hasn't played since three months *before* Hinkie arrived and is essentially a tremendously well-paid assistant slash big brother slash walking relic. The roster has officially been turnt the hell over.

So now it's the start of the 2014-15 season, Year Two of the Hinkie Rebuild -- his Empire Strikes Back. And if you're reading this, you're on board. There exists no man or woman who hates themselves enough to endure my languid prose on the happy depression that is a full 82-game slate for a team riddled with unknown's and less-known's and Rights To's. Hello, welcome, please purchase a JaKarr Sampson shirsey on your way out.

Expectations, okay. I expect to be entertained. Not in the way traditional basketball entertains -- "Wow! What a play!" -- but the way this bifocaled organization has come to entertain us these last 18 months -- "Wow.... what? A play? -- and with surprise. Though Casper Ware no longer wears Sixers colors, his spirit lives on. A forgotten, undersized, confusing former half-prospect from Long Beach State that suddenly came to embody the spirit of a team with an identity and a culture. Even if that identity is three years from now and that culture is LOSE MUCH, last year's Sixers found motivation and fun in the strangest of places, and I'm tickled to see what diamonds bags of apricots this front office will find in the rough.

And there's hope beyond the sheer ridiculousness of Darius Johnson-Odom for ten days. Nerlens Noel exists IRL. Michael Carter-Williams will be back soon or eventually soon. KJ McDaniels is a knife in the dark. Hollis Thompson has royal blood coursing through his majestic veins. Joel Embiid lurks like an aging bottle of good scotch. Lottery reform was rejected. The good guys won. Dario Saric will be joined in the land of tomorrow with Top Men reinforcements very soon. Hope is not an idea, it is our only life form.

You want feeling?

Brandon Davies made this team. If that doesn't make you feel something -- anything -- nothing will. One way or the other, this team is gonna make you feel. This fanbase is no place for detachees.

SIXERS. One day more.