6 most embarrassing 76ers lowlights from rock bottom

Oh dear.

Oh my.

Oh no.

My natural inclination is to apologize for some reason. Like, I don’t think it’s my fault that Monday night’s game happened, but I can’t help but feel like many someones deserve an apology from another someone. The Philadelphia 76ers season wasn’t supposed to go like this. This was supposed to be the year when they got to be happy.

Today is February 25, 2025. The 76ers have lost eight straight. They are 12th in the Eastern Conference with the 6th worst record in the league. They have the winning percentage of a 29-win team. Joel Embiid is not well.

It’s… weird. They are not far away from a 5-2 stretch against the Mavericks, Celtics, Nuggets, Kings, Lakers, Bulls, and Cavaliers. Exclude the Bulls, and you have some of the best competition in the entire league.

Maybe Chicago took that personally. The Bulls kinda sorta demoralized the 76ers last night. Chicago was up 136-86 midway through the fourth quarter. Per ESPN, “The Bulls set season-highs for first-half points (75) and points in a game.” The Bulls weren’t just the better basketball team last night. At times, they were the only team playing anything resembling basketball.

So that brings us here. The bad things have not only happened, but they seem to be a fixture of the 76ers fan life. At least for now.

Maybe, and it’s not my call to make, but maybe it’s time to try finding the humor in your own misery as a coping skill. Believe me, it works. Have you ever cried so hard you started laughing after a while? Just at the sheer ridiculousness of it all? No? I recommend it.

Here are six unfortunate 76ers moments from last night’s game.

WHEEEEEEEEE- oh

We’re just going to link this tweet at the top of each slide, and I’ll give you the timestamp. Credit to ballislife.com for putting together this… uh… I’m just going to call it a “collection.” What they might be collecting is up to each individual viewer.

The first play starts at 00:00. It should be easy to find. Ricky Council IV starts off a three-on-one break, kinda jogs his way into the lane, and then forgets what one is meant to do with a basketball.

The three most basic options when you’re on offense are to either shoot, dribble, or pass. Council’s drive to the basket was a fusion of all three. If basketball were a restaurant, this could be an interesting dish. But basketball is a sport, and this is a turnover.

Ricky Council gets airborne, seems to try and recollect the ball as he’s drifting toward the ground, and, at the last second, Council tries to dump it off to Kelly Oubre. His feet touched the ground too soon, unfortunately. That’s a travel. Just a tragic conclusion to a three-on-one break.

This isn’t good, but it’s not, like, embarrassing.

Give it time.

Big Body Roddy’s Dodgy Toss

This one is special enough to get its own clip. Thanks to Fullcourtpass for this one:

Unless you sink your shot straight through the net like really good basketball players sometimes do, usually when you’re trying to make a basket you want the ball to get close to the rim. At least then we know you’re trying.

Also, the points count when the ball goes through the rim. Not near it. That’s a different game. Basketshoes or something. Different rules, different dangers. If you see a basketshoe coming toward you, you dive out of the way, or you shoot it with the railgun.

Additionally, when you’re trying to catch a rebound, your first inclination should not be to duck. Sure. Fine. Whatever. Maybe his feet were in the wrong position, or maybe it did get a little physical beneath the hoop like it does, but this play does look, unfortunately, like Adem Bona was a little scared and didn’t want the ball to attack him. Dodgeball memories maybe. Trauma is complicated.

The amazing thing is, like, usually when people get hit in the head with a ball the crowd gets jazzed up a bit. There’s a little “ooooh” sound and some laughter or something. There was barely a reaction in this case to either the silly shot attempt or Bona’s fading header through the baseline. The Philly crowd had to be quite disengaged for that little effect.

Again, this isn’t painfully egregious. It’s “bad,” and it’s “bad bad,” but it’s not “special bad.”

This shot made me make this face: 🤣

Special bad makes you make this face: 😖

Throw your hands in the air if youse a true player

This clip starts at 0:23

Usually if you’re being stripped, you like to embellish contact. Tough to do when there’s no contact. Also tough to do when the moment when the contact would have happened actually happened about half a second before you throw your hands up like “Oh no! How could this ball have moved this direction when I didn’t want it to? I’ve been bamboozled!”

Nah. It was just very good defense by Lonzo Ball. Isn’t it nice that Lonzo Ball can play basketball again? I bet he might curve. Flex that corner. Wow.

But unfortunately, Lonzo Ball is not all-powerful and all-seeing. After stripping the ball, it meandered away into the hands of Paul George.

Now, if you remember, Paul George is supposed to be really good at basketball. He has been an All-Star nine times. That’s nine times more than you, in all likelihood. Disparage his talent at your own risk. He really is really good.

However: donk.

When things are bad, even the good sucks. The happy moments don’t count, the brain juice doesn’t flow, and the quality players shoot a shot after a failed foul-drawing attempt that bounces straight up off the rim like the ball was being raptured.

I can’t really think of many moments this year when Paul George has stepped up and decided to carry the Philadelphia 76ers on his back from a place of impending disaster to a victory. That isn’t to say it’s impossible, just that it’s unrealized. Joel Embiid has played 19 games. Tyrese Maxey is now being guarded like an All-Star. Paul George was supposed to be better than Tobias Harris. Someone somewhere has to do something, right?

My inclination is to apologize again.

Firmly grasp it in your hand

FIRMLY GRASP IT.

This moment comes at 0:33.

On the 76ers side, I think this might be my least favorite lowlight of the game. Ricky Council IV (I swear he might get demoted to Ricky Council XI or Ricky Council L if he keeps doing this stuff) has an uncontested rebound, and instead of securing the ball he decides to turn into Dalen Terry and kind of just offers him the ball. Terry dunks it. Also uncontested.

There are also two players nearby on the 76ers who are just kind of watching. Maybe dumbfounded. Maybe just too out of any motivation to live or compete to do anything other than watch death happen.

Dude.

I do understand that at this point in the game the 76ers were down 107-73. I do understand it would take more than one play to turn the game around. I do understand that this couple of seconds are not the reason the 76ers lost this game.

But again.

Dude.

This makes me sad!!! I don’t like being sad!!!

The game is over when the losing team says it’s over. This seemed like that time.

I won’t pretend I don’t know what it’s like to tap out at the idea of overwhelming odds, but that’s one of the fantasies of sports: that maybe this will be the game where things get better. Maybe this will be the rebound and push that starts a comeback, and new winning streak, and new lease on the season. That moment might still come! The 76ers are only dying, not dead!

But man. It’s hard to see where the jolt comes from when you see effort like this. Nasty, nasty emotions.

Maybe it won’t count as a shot in the box score if my form looks really, really bad

This one starts at 0:47, but you may want to mute it. One Andre Drummond seems to yell something akin to “AAAHHHH F***.” We really don’t want to bring attention to things like Andre Drummond yelling “AAAHHHH F***” out loud very loudly. Many people find words like “F***” offensive. They don’t like it when things like “F***” get mentioned. For whatever reason I guess we do what they F***ing want? I don’t get it.

Andre Drummond gets a nice little pocket bounce pass from Lonnie Walker in the middle of the lane and just seems to let go of the ball in the middle of jumping. It's not anything that seems to resemble a shot. Just “oops.”

It doesn’t necessarily seem like he was embellishing a foul. He just forgot how to have hands for a bit, and the ball goes directly to Tre Jones. Gently and safely.

I think that kind of thing has to be pretty cool for an NBA player. You work your whole life to get an opportunity to maybe do a good thing in an NBA game if the situation and your talents allow you. It’s usually some kind of negotiation between what you can do and your opponents can do. Every second, every stat is earned.

Not this one though! Free numbers! Yay! Jones got to catch a ball that was just ambling through the air toward his face, run up the court, and kick a pass out to Jevon Carter to hit a three.

Nice. Simple. Good. That was cool. Unless you’re a 76ers fan, which is not a life I recommend at the moment.

NUUUUUURRRRSE

And then there are the last 35 seconds. (Don't watch this skit if you don't like being sad. Like me.)

It’s not like there is much I can add to what the announcers had to say from 1:00 on. And I wouldn't want to. If anything, maybe I can retract some of the somewhat revolting exhilaration.

I don’t know how to frame it exactly. Schadenfreude is just part of basketball culture, it seems. There are those who find more fun in rooting against players, teams, and coaches they dislike than they do rooting for their own team to succeed.

To an extent, I get it. If you’re focused on only one thing, championships, then it’s just kind of an inevitability. If that’s your standard, then only one team or one fanbase gets to enjoy the NBA each season. Everyone else must. Be. Upset.

Let’s assume this is true because for some it absolutely is. If you feel like your team that just, I don’t know, went to the conference finals somehow fell short of your standard of a good season then there’s no real solace to be found in their getting there in the first place. You lost. It doesn’t matter how close you got to winning. You’re still a loser. A big massive, failure of a person who was unwise enough to be born in the same city as a professional sports team.

But you know who else lost? Nearly everybody. You have to start ripping and tearing at the other fanbases around you. “Sure we didn’t win, but YOU didn’t win WORSE!” I can’t be happy, therefore I need to make someone else more upset than me. Calvin and Hobbes had a comic about this. Calvin and Hobbes was an amazing comic. But maybe don't use Calvin as an example of how to live your best life. Calvin was a literal child.

This is called poison. The world is too beautiful to send darkness into a feedback loop. That is exactly what happened here. The biggest lowlight of the game did not belong to the 76ers. It came from those feeding into and reveling in their misfortune.

I just feel bad, man. I just feel bad.