If you’ve ever met me, you’d notice that over the course of a conversation I might casually drop a sports reference or two. Some people I know hate it, some people I know expect it. Whatever it is, sports play a big role in my life — especially basketball. College basketball is dominated by my love for the North Carolina Tar Heels but the NBA has always stood out to me and mystified me.
I have a favorite team for every sport — shout out to the Bucs, Phillies, Lightning and Tar Heels! — except for the NBA. Over the years, my NBA team has been whatever team Vince Carter, my favorite Tar Heel/player/person, is playing for. He’s still in the league after 20 years (God bless him) so I’ve been a Raptor, Net, Magic, Sun, Maverick, Grizzlie, King and now a Hawk. However, if I had to pick a favorite team, one that’s close to my heart, it would be the Philadelphia 76ers.
Growing up, my dad would tell me stories about how Dr. J choked Larry Bird in Boston. About when Moses Malone said the Sixers were going to win in 1983 by going “fo, fo, fo”. About how Charles Barkley would dominate guys half a foot taller than him. Stories about Wilt, Billy Cunningham, Hal Greer, you name it. My dad loved the Sixers (he doesn’t care for the NBA anymore) and, like my love for sports, it rubbed off on me.
Allen Iverson was the coolest dude in sports growing up, at least for me. He single handedly dragged the Sixers to the Finals in 01. I remember my brother and I praying to his poster in my living room during that first game, where he went ballistic and made Tyronn Lue a highlight in the “don’t get too close to the sun” department. They won that game, but eventually lost to a much better team. It’s a typical Philly ending: hard fought, but you’re the underdog. You’re not meant to win. That’s why the Eagles Super Bowl win was so amazing: They weren’t even supposed to be there…
You’re probably wondering why I’m bringing any of this up. Well, the point is simple: We all love an underdog story.. and that’s exactly what this is, for better or worse.
I have always identified as an underdog, ever since I was a kid. I’ve had to overcome a lot of different odds and prove people wrong. I walk around with a chip on my shoulder — proudly, I might add. I set lofty expectations for myself and I’ve had a go for broke attitude at times. A lot of times, I’m way out of my league and it comes crashing down, whether due to poor planning or poor execution. But just like every Philly sports fan has muttered at the end of a bad season… There’s always next year.
I’m writing this on the last week of the year. The Sixers just played the Celtics and while they lost the game in spectacular fashion — Kyrie was unreal down the stretch — they have come a long way to get that marquee Christmas Day matchup. And it’s all thanks to one guy having the balls to do something that would piss off every Philadelphia sports fan for the first half of this decade: lose on purpose.
And now, a lesson on The Process of Tanking: Learning To Win By Losing, made possible by Sam Hinkie and the Philadelphia 76ers:
In 2011-12, the Sixers had made back to back playoff appearcances (the 7 and 8 seed, respectively). They made it to the 2nd round and lost to Boston. They had an aging Elton Brand but a young core of players in Jrue Holiday, Andre Iguodala, Lou Williams, Thad Young, Evan Turner and Spencer Hawes, as well as some draft picks. It was a solid team — a surprise team — but an overall interesting team in the Lebron dominated East.
That offseason, the Sixers made a trade with the Lakers for All-Star C Andrew Bynum, giving up longtime Sixer Iguodala in the “process”. Bynum hurt himself in the preseason — bowling, of all things — and never played a game in a Sixers uniform. EVER. They missed the playoffs, and head coach Doug Collins was fired. It was a gamble that didn’t pay off, but the Sixers still had chips on the table and they were about to go for broke with the next bet.
In the 2013 draft, the Sixers took Michael Carter Williams and made a trade to land the 6th overall pick from New Orleans to take F/C Nerlens Noel, who was coming off an injury he sustained after one year at Kentucky. They were solid prospects and two guys you could maybe build a team around. New GM Sam Hinkie had a different idea though…
He was going to tank the season in hopes of getting better picks. To get Noel, they had to trade Holiday and let Williams and Young walk in free agency. They went 19-63, 3rd worst in their history. Michael Carter Williams did win ROY, however Noel missed the entire season due to injury. Hinkie traded every morsel from that playoff team in exchange for basically nothing. Literally, just draft picks and mouth guards.
The next season was the 76th season of the 76ers. All that losing only got them the third pick, which they used to take ANOTHER big man with health concerns, a guy who had only been playing basketball for only four years — Joel Embiid, out of Kansas. His teammate Andrew Wiggins was the first pick overall but Embiid was atop of a lot of boards. He had a raw talent, one you could build a contender around — only if his back would let up. Embiid, much like Nerlens Noel, did not play a single game for the Sixers his rookie season.
Embiid didn’t play for a while actually, and the longer he sat on the bench, the more the Sixers would lose. In the two years that Embiid sat out, the Sixers won 28 out of 164 games. Combine that with 19 wins the season before they drafted Embiid, and the Sixers had done something only one other team had done: finish three straight years with less than twenty wins. Sam Hinkie was shown the door. The process was over…
Except it was only beginning. After striking out the year before and taking ANOTHER FRIGGIN BIG MAN, the Sixers historically bad season had paid off and they were awarded the first pick. Ben Simmons, a Lebron-esque guard/forward hybrid from LSU, was the unanimous selection. With Simmons and Embiid, the Sixers finally had the two cornerstone players they could hang their championship hats on.
Simmons would also sit out the whole year due to injury, which is a requirement if you get drafted by the Sixers apparently. They ended up in the draft lottery again but this time there was a buzz around the Sixers. Once again they found themselves with the first pick after a trade with Boston, thanks to the assets Hinkie had accumulated over the years. They ended up whiffing on the pick, in my opinion, but they’re still set up nicely for the future. (Still, Jayson Tatum is a nice thing the Sixers should have right now, but can’t. Thanks, Jerry Colangelo.)
Forget him though. All of this comes back to one man with a crazy plan: Sam Hinkie. The man who started the process and trusted it more than anyone never had a chance to reap its benefits. Sure, Hinkie tanked the team and made money while doing it, but none of this bright future is possible without him taking a leap of faith and saying, we’re gonna suck now… but we’re gonna be better off because of it. You have to go through the mud to get to greener pastures, right?
The Sixers are now one of the favorites in the Eastern Conference, thanks in part to Embiid, Simmons and a new addition in All Star F Jimmy Butler, who the team could resign given all of the cap space they have. Are they going to win a championship this year? Probably not, but then again who really knows? They have a chance, though; only time will tell when the rest of this process will come to fruition and what the true results of that process were.
I guess it also depends on what your definition of success is. if you value results, like we all usually do, then championships are what you want. However, if you also value the opportunity to play for the championship — like the Buffalo Bills of the early 90s, going to four straight Super Bowls only to lose all of them — that can also still be considered a success, because few get the opportunity to lose like that. Right now, I would love to be the Bills and have the opportunity, but I’m more like the Sixers: stuck in a long process of losing, hoping it all pays off in the end.
When I was twenty years old, I was at the lowest part of my life. I was a dishwasher with no car, no motivation and no clue what to do with my life. One night, I wrote a script loosely based on my life and had this crazy idea: I was going to actually make this one day. I didn’t know how, but I knew I had to get to Hollywood and be in the film industry. Nearly nine years later, six of which were in college, and I’m in Hollywood and the process continues. It’s just going pretty slow.
I want to be a film producer. If you‘re wondering how one becomes a producer, don’t worry because that makes two of us. It’s a little more complicated than it seems, which is already pretty complicating. You can either go the independent route and try to get projects started from scratch, or you can be an assistant somewhere and possibly move up through the ranks that way, which is my preferred route. While I had a couple of internships during grad school, I never really got enough experience to warrant consideration for a job so my job, essentially, has been looking for a job.
I’ve been on a ton of interviews and each time I leave with the same feeling: that went well, I think I got it. I rarely leave an interview not confident in myself. For some reason though, I haven’t been able to land a job anywhere. After a few days of waiting by the phone, I start to question why no one will hire me or if I’m not good enough to be out here. I’ll admit, it’s not easy to write about this because it makes me feel like a failure. A failure who hasn’t even begun to really have a chance to fail, honestly.
It’s also hard to talk about because sometimes it can come off as whiny and I get it. I’m not the only one going through this struggle. I could probably be more proactive in my job search, maybe try something new like walking into someone’s office and proclaim that I work there now — which, true story, my career advisor in grad school said she did and didn’t agree with me when I said we can’t just do that now. If we could, I’d be working at Disney right now and you know that’s true.
I’ve heard from a ton of people on what to do to land a job. Little cheats and techniques that you can use to put you ahead of the curve. The truth is, it’s different for everyone. No one has the real answer because if it were that simple, we’d all have jobs. That doesn’t annoy me as much as hearing someone say why not make a career change. Why not go into Real Estate? Why not go into teaching? Have you thought about coming home to Tampa?
These are all valid questions, and ones I wish my mother would stop asking me (I love you mama, it’s all good!). Still, much like the whole “why don’t you bring home a girl” thing your mom is likely to ask you — and believe me, she does — this is something I don’t have an answer for. I don’t know why. I try my best and put on my best face, but I can’t make anything happen. This applies to both my job search, and my dating life.
Fun side note about both of those things… I have a Tinder account and a LinkedIn account. I go on both everyday and I have the exact same chance of succeeding on both apps. I have actually had a few successes on both — I’ll score a date from Tinder, an interview from LinkedIn, or some job site equivalent. In both scenarios, I can’t believe someone was drunk enough to let this happen, but in both scenarios I’m also confident I’m the guy for the job. Unfortunately, in both scenarios, I end up sitting at the bar like why doesn’t anyone love me?
(Side Bet… Which will happen first: I get a job or I get a girlfriend? Let’s put the odds for job at 20-1 and girlfriend at 25-1, or if you’re playing the moneylines, job at +200 and girlfriend at +250. You can even place your money on the Sixers to win the Finals, which is also at 20-1, so the odds are the same. Place your bets, I’ll keep you updated.)
Still, I don’t want to give up on this. It all comes back to that word: failure. I’ve taken some risks in my life, but the biggest gamble I’ve ever made was talking myself into being a big time Hollywood producer. But I also don’t make bets that I don’t think I can win. If I take a chance, I could lose a lot; but if I don’t take a chance, I’ll never know what could’ve been. I’m not saying I have illusions of grandeur, but if I can take these illusions I have and turn them into a movie, maybe I’m not crazy after all. If I give up now, then to me that’s a failure and that’s not something I’m willing to accept. Not now, not ever.
I started writing this on Christmas, during the Sixers game. Today is the 26th. It’s been a week since I had my last job interview, one that I felt extremely confident about… at least up until this point. I haven’t heard back from them, despite the interviewer telling me he’d call me one way or another to let me know if I got the job (this very rarely happens, so I thought I got it). I still have hope that I’m going to get the call back, but I’ve been down this road before. It doesn’t look so good.
Then again… maybe it’s not over. Maybe by the time I post this, it’ll be a different story. Maybe I’ll get a call tomorrow morning and I’ll get that job and finally — FINALLY — feel like I earned something, that all of this wasn’t for nothing. Sure, I won’t be where I want to be but I’ll be one step closer. That’s all I want, after all; a chance to prove I belong here. To show what I can do. That I, too, can be a winner. That’s why I look to sports for motivation.
I’ve seen a barely six-foot point guard lead a team of misfits to NBA Finals. I saw Brad Lidge strike out Eric Hinske in Game 5 of the World Series and make my dad cry for the first time in my life. I saw Nick Foles throw for three touchdowns and catch one in the Super Bowl. I’ve also seen Villanova rip my heart out, but we won’t go there (we’ll never go there). I’ve seen Rocky Balboa go the distance against Apollo Creed, and I’ve seen him beat Creed, Clubber Lang, Ivan Drago and Tommy Gunn. I’ve seen some improbable things play out right before my eyes, both good and bad. That’s the beauty of sports: anything can happen.
Personally, I’m tired of losing. I’m tired of feeling like I’m not good enough or that I’m not cut out for any of this. I don’t want to keep feeling like I’m in second place. I want to hold my head up high and put that one finger up in the air (not the middle finger, guys). I’m not sure how or when it will happen, but I’m going to keep trying to figure it out because I want to win. For me, it’s all about trying to find a positive in the negative — to try to learn how to win by losing, because it’s OK to lose. You’re better for it.
Failure can be your biggest distraction or it can be your biggest motivation, it all depends on how you look at it. If you don’t do something in fear of failure, you can never win. If you try at something and fail, you can learn from that mistake and if you keep trying and keep learning, you might just figure out a way to win. Eventually. It’s not easy, though; after all, it is a process. You just gotta put your faith in it and trust it’ll all work out.
Until next time…
“Trust the process.” – Sam Hinkie
This Is Why I Can’t Have Nice Things 