There was a curious post on the NBA sub-Reddit Monday morning from a Redditor named pizza_mongerer who claimed to be a Philadelphia 76ers fan at one point in time. That point was way back in 2001, when Allen Iverson carried the 76ers to the NBA Finals and a surprising Game 1 win over the Los Angeles Lakers. Clearly, pizza_mongerer has failed to keep up with the Joneses:
So I haven’t really followed basketball since the 76ers played against the lakers for the NBA championship in 2001. After learning that most of my coworkers follow the sport I would like to get in on the action. How are my 76ers? Do we have an allstar player like Allen Iverson? Are we expected to do well this year? Where is a good place to start following the sport?
All in all I’m looking forward to the upcoming season and being apart of the nba community!
That text — from the initial post — has since been deleted (here’s a Google cached version), but it led to a number of responses, ranging from a couple people who took the original post seriously…
Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but the 76ers are atrocious, and will be even worse this year. They are predicted to be the worst team in the league next year. However, if you stick around long enough, they have a nice young core who should develop nicely in 3-4 years.
Yikes.
Your GM (Sam Hinkie) is an evil genius. He’s exploiting the draft system for all that it’s worth. Making a mockery out of the lottery by constructing a terrible roster to lose him the most amount of games as an active protest towards the league to change the drafting system!
Okay, no but really Hinkie put together a mediocre roster to help him lose games to get a solid draft pick. Your 3 best players (Nerlens Noel, Michael Carter-Williams, and Joel Embiid) are very good prospects for the future. Noel & Embiid are big men who have injury issues and MCW is the reigning rookie of the year. Hopefully (for your sake) their rebuilding process is expedited.
This season is not going to be very good either, so you’re not in much luck. Last year they were slated to be the worst but they actually weren’t due to the fact that they had the quickest pace in the league and surprised a few teams here and there.
I think the plan is to start competing in a year, with Embiid, Noel and MCW as their young core, as well as a slew of other younger role players and most probably some big(ger) name that they might get in free agency or via trade (they have a shitload of cap space and assets already so they’re bound to make a move at some point).
This year the point of interest is Noel and determining how good he is going to be, as well as what position he will start at. As for entertainment purposes, they have Tony Wroten, that will be a starter for the first few games. He’s a slasher that can produce a pretty play every now and then, but not very efficient otherwise. There’s also a few other guys in KJ McDaniels and Ron Roberts that are as athletic as they come but they’re not all-star potential or anything.
To answer your question, the big franchise player they’re hoping to have over the next few years is Embiid, a Center, but there are some injury concerns about him.
…to more Internet-appropriate responses, calling out pizza_mongerer as a run-of-the-mill r/NBA troll:
Not sure if this is a troll post or not….
Oy… This is sad. This is how doctors must feel when they have to tell someone he’s dying.
Not sure if trolling
If it is trolling, then fantastic work. If not, then I have no idea how this happens. I’m a barely a casual follower of many sports, and don’t even pay attention to most teams in major sports leagues, but I at least have a rough idea of where everyone’s at. I can’t remember the last time I sat down and watched a Major League Baseball game, but I can still tell you who the playoff teams are. Even if this guy hasn’t actively followed the team in 13 years, he should have at least some idea of where the team is at, right? Also, why ask Reddit when there’s, you know, Google for that?
Final verdict: A+ trolling.
[Reddit]
