Glen Macnow wrote a column yesterday claiming that now that Sam Hinkie is gone, we can all root for the Sixers again. Not just the nerds, I guess. He framed the fans who hung tight with the team over the last few years as other, as different, as worse. To me, that’s run of the mill “Old Man Yells at Cloud” stuff. This argument over the Process, however, is nothing new. But here was Glen’s lede at the time it was published:

With all due respect to the PSU sex scandal deniers, there is no more grating fan base than the clinging coterie of Sam Hinkie True Believers.

There’s a lot here. Most of it can be written off as a mistake in semantics, but it’s understandable why a group of people whose only crime is liking a front office dork might not appreciate the analogy.

To Macnow’s credit, after thinking on it (and receiving some Tweets), he removed the entire PSU reference from the lede:

Problem: Scott O’Neil endorsed the sentiment – which, again, took aim at his literal best customers – with the Tweet in this post, which has since been deleted.

We’ve spoken here before about how out-of-touch the Sixers’ front office seems, but this was a new low for Scott, this on a day where he did the financial news network car wash, promoting how much money he made to put a fucking logo on a jersey. So either he didn’t actually read Macnow’s column, or he just doesn’t care. He also did not take kindly if you pointed out the fact that he’s a walking contradiction. I mocked his endorsement and later retweeted some pro-Hinkie, anti-ownership stuff:

https://twitter.com/JimmyDonofrio/status/732310235772256257

And later, when I checked to see if O’Neil had maybe deleted his endorsement, I saw this:

That was after many people were tweeting screenshots at me that they, too, had been blocked by O’Neil. After the block rampage, O’Neil tweeted:

oneil

He later tweeted that he “should have definitely read the lead closer.” In writing terms, if you don’t know, the lede means the first paragraph or so. Come on, Scott.

By calling Macnow’s column a “must-read,” the CEO of the Sixers was, indirectly, criticizing the fans who kept going to games, buying tickets, buying merch, and defending him and his tone-deaf front office compatriots against all comers. This team seems like it can’t wait to get rid of the incredibly loyal fans they amassed over the last three years and finally get back to “real” basketball fans. Not the nerds who went out of their way to watch bad basketball and actually support the franchise when maybe they didn’t deserve it. It’s truly unbelievable, but from the out-of-touch O’Neil, wholly expected.

But this was one step too far: