The first week of training camp in the books and the preseason starts later tonight, so we are well on our way to Sixers basketball being back in full force.
(Which, given the recent performances of the Phillies, Eagles and Flyers, thank goodness for that.)
To say that Camden (and, on Saturday, Xfinity Mobile during the Blue vs White scrimmage) were buzzing would be an understatement. I don't think I've seen that many national media in attendance in the entire 16 years that I've been covering the team. There's no other way to describe the first few days of camp other than as a circus.
Admittedly, it's certainly not the first circus that I've ever covered during my time on the beat. Oh, no, not with this franchise. I've seen huge media contingents before – such as when the media shows up because of a 26-game losing streak, or because the advisor hired his son to be the next steward of the franchise and how dare any of us for questioning that, or because said GM would go on to tweet about needing a big ladder so he could slap his star player.
But this wasn't that kind of a circus. This circus rolled into town because everybody was excited for the team. Because the sports fans in this city have increasingly become reliant on them for their collective sanity.
It's a nice change of pace.
It was pretty wild to think back to some of the seasons during The Process where training camp was held at Stockton, when the entire media contingent was myself, Rich Hofmann, Tom Moore, and maybe two or three other people at most, focusing on the addition of Kendall Marshall of all people. Not even because we thought Kendall Marshall could stick in the league but because we hoped that his one skill (passing) could help us evaluate the long-term upside of Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor.
(Editor's note: it didn't matter. Neither Okafor nor Noel stuck in the league.)
We've come a long way.
In this week's newsletter...
- The Big Takeaway: Joel Embiid looks incredible.
- Some thoughts on the "alpha" discourse.
- Mailbag questions.
