Kyle Neubeck
Appearances
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
Yes, we do pre-game and post-game for every game. We have five shows a week. So if there's four games, we'll have one off-day show. But we are round-the-clock Sixers coverage. We got our written stuff as well, where we'll have a lot of stuff with the trade deadline coming up and all the balls in the air for this group.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
It's been exactly what you would expect. It's been a lot of pain, suffering, chaos. And I think probably the main word is uncertainty. Right. And I think that's probably been the toughest thing for those guys to deal with. And so it's been the toughest thing for us on the media side to deal with is it's like I wake up every day and I just I don't know who's playing.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
I don't know what's going to happen. And you just kind of let the chips fall where they may.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
So I think it's mainly if you had sat down preseason training camp, whatever, and said, this is every possible thing that could go wrong for the Sixers. I think you've probably gotten for the guys on this roster like 10%. or 11 out of the 15 worst case scenarios. Joel has been the most not healthy he's been in a long time.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
He missed half the year last year and he looked like Iron Man in that year compared to this season so far. Paul George has battled multiple injuries. Caleb Martin has been in and out of the lineup all year. Kelly Oubre's had a pretty good season, but he's at least for the two-way play, but has shot the ball poorly for long stretches.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
Maxie's been incredible lately, but had a really slow start to the year shooting-wise. And so you just go on and on. You already brought up Jared McCain, tore the meniscus. He was one of the few bright spots on the team. And so it has been one of those years where –
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
It just feels like whenever they turn a corner, whenever they get one guy back, whenever they get two guys back, three guys then go back to the injury report. They can't keep a backup center healthy. They're playing Kyle Lowry and Reggie Jackson backcourt minutes together. And frankly, those have actually worked, which has been a big surprise for me.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
The splits say, hey, this is a combo you might want to play a little bit more often. It led to their win last night. Well, that's a problem, right? It's a big problem. Yeah. But like, I know you guys have respect for Kyle Lowry and to a lesser extent, Reggie for their careers.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
But Kyle Lowry at 38, 39 years old is just not somebody you want to be relying on as every night and pretty big contributor. So he had to play. This is probably a snapshot of the season. He played 17 straight minutes to end their game against Sacramento. Kyle Lowry has gone many games this year where he didn't play 17 total minutes.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
I think the tough thing with making an argument for tanking, and there are a lot of merits to it, especially the protections they have on their pick this year. They run a big risk of OKC just taking their draft pick in a really good class and taking a potential high upside player off the board for them. The tricky part is that you have to sell it to Joel Embiid first.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
All this starts with you would have to rule out Joel for the season. And I think there are some people on the outside who think this is a scenario where if you rule out Joel and you say, hey, you're not playing the rest of this year, you come back training camp next year, you get off to a fresh start, it'll help the knee.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
But I don't think the issue he's dealing with is like, oh, he's got to get surgery or this is one where he takes – six months off and it materially improves the knee. This is for the rest of his career, a management issue. He's going to have problems like sort of similar to what we saw with Dwayne Wade, right?
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
Like Dwayne Wade, after a certain amount of time, the knee would swell up and he'd have to manage it. Or, you know, Chris Paul has played without a meniscus in one of his knees for a long, long time. And again,
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
transparently he's probably a little more serious about the day-to-day care of everything because he's also a much smaller guy too yeah let's not forget that joel is a massive human being you know you know a hundred pounds difference also yeah yeah yeah so it's it's not serving joel or at least joel's need to say we're giving you the rest of the season off this is a a It's pain management.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
It's swelling management. It's all kinds of different things. And he has tried to put himself in position from a... He's lost a lot of weight. He's slimming down. He's trying to put less stress on all that. But that's the main reason that I don't think you can throw in the towel. It's like... this guy is going to have to deal with this problem the rest of his career.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
He is still the straw that stirs the drink for this team. And Maxie's recent play is like, look, unless you shut him down and there are no health or any other issues that, at least right now, knock on wood, you can point to with him and say, we need to shut him down for this or make up a fake injury.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
And so I just, I don't see how you can unless you bring back Joel again and he's unable to give it a go. I think if he comes back again and it's like, he can't get through three games without going back on the injury report, then you say, maybe we just scrap it. But until then, I think they're still committed to trying to win this year.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
in april you know what let's say when indeed gets healthy and george is back and they kind of all have all their guys are they expecting that do you do you see that being a possibility i mean i think it's a low odds possibility and i'm a big believer in i i've criticized all year even before this this has been a long joel stretch of missed games at this point when they talked about you know no back-to-backs and being really conservative with his body
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
I just don't believe in that type of plan for a team that needs... They basically changed the entire roster in the offseason, right? They only had three or four returning players. You need to spend that 82 games working on everything, right? The Different defensive coverages you want to play, the counters that you have on offense.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
And Joel is such a huge, like, all-consuming offensive force, right? So a lot of guys in the league today, they've never played with a real big man, and they've never played with a guy who's like, we're going to operate through the high post or out of the elbows, and he's going to be our main scoring threat. And so that's a thing that takes a lot of time. And so I just...
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
I think the teams that win in the regular season tend to win in the playoffs, right? And so it's a silly thing to say, like, oh, winning teams win more. Yeah, but it's usually how it goes.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
I think if they're going to make a move, it's probably one that would have at least a little bit of short-term upside, but you're more focused on because of where they're at with the salary cap, let's get somebody in who's got room to grow with Maxie and fits alongside everybody else. So an example we've brought up,
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
quite a bit is santi aldama in memphis right he's a guy that they didn't they didn't get the extension agreed to he'll be a restricted free agent this summer he's on a i want to say he's around like eight million dollar contract and they have a bunch of guys the sixers in that range where they could do a one for one salary type swap and then say hey we'll give you a first round pick and then yeah the grizzlies don't typically like to pay the tax for guys right so
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
Yeah. So it's a guy that he's a versatile front court guy. You can play him next to him. You can play him as a center at times. He can help out. You know, Yabu's had to play all these center minutes like that's the type of move. Like it's not a big swing. Right. But it's a guy who is good now and you think can grow into the future like that.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
If they're going to make a buying move, I would keep an eye on some stuff like that. But I still don't know that it's clear that they're going to buy, right? You mentioned Yabu and Eric Gordon. Yabu Sali is probably the most interesting decision they have at the deadline because they really don't have salary flexibility to bring him back. He's having a great role player season.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
I think it's going to be a test of, and I hate getting into like the math and the CBA and all that. It's like very boring to talk about, but how is that going to impact the market for middle-class players like Yabusele? I think we saw last summer, a lot of those guys are getting squeezed. There are only so many of those mid-level contracts to go around.
The Athletic NBA Daily
Biggest All Star Snubs | Should the Sixers tank?
So maybe you can end up keeping them and stealing them, but otherwise it probably would behoove them to say, Hey, if we can get a few seconds for this guy, that's probably worth it for us as we try to retool moving forward.