Little did I know when I wrote this largely tongue-in-cheek piece about the Sixers needing Meek for their courtside celeb game, in November, that it would largely come true, in an even more spectacular way than imagined:

I am so in on this story it’s not even funny. Meek’s legend grows. He may be Jack, Spike and that weird guy with the coat and cowboy hat rolled into one. We need him courtside Saturday against the Warriors. Steph has no chance in the gravity of these sort of power brokers. In fact, I want Harris, Rubin, Blitzer, Smith, Meek, the judge, Mack, and even Lil Dicky just for shits and giggles, all seated together courtside. Throw in the old guy with the white hair and… the other old guy with the white hair who is the lawyer in the Penn State frat thing, and it’ll be a big Philly party. Here they come.

At the time, I didn’t realize how close co-owner Michael Rubin was to Meek and that he would ultimately be the one to give him a lift back to his rightful courtside seat, or that the Sixers would be on the verge of making a run upon his return, but here we are. Big Philly party it is.

As you might be able to tell, I know not much about the rap game. But to ye I make this prediction: Meek’s legend status only grows, perhaps tenfold, after what transpired last night. It’s cute how Jay-Z raps about sitting courtside, where Knicks and Nets give him high fives, but that’s so JV compared to Meek Mill being granted his release by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and getting picked up by a billionaire, who flies him to a playoff game, where he heads directly to the locker room of the hottest team in the NBA to take a shower, picks up his jersey, rings the bell, and then sits arm-in-arm with owners, celebs, and what feels like the entire city.

Just look at these images:

https://twitter.com/SInow/status/988931074276364288

Meek got fat as shit. 😭

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It’s hard to imagine a branding campaign – Phila Unite – tying in better with the events of last night and even the last few months. The us against the world mentality is used by all in the sports world, but few have ever lived it the way Philly teams have since January.

The Eagles, indisputably the best team in the NFL during the regular season, lose their quarterback and are underdogs in every single one of their playoff games. They own their status, celebrate it, use Meek Mill’s Dreams and Nightmares as their anthem, and then take down a literal sports dynasty. I’ll spare waxing poetic about Villanova because people get mad when I do that, but know that they won their last 11 games by double-digits en route to a National Championship. And then the Sixers accelerate into the playoffs, re-brand themselves seemingly overnight with their ‘Unite’ campaign, and pull the entire city together on the floor level of the Wells Fargo Center, with local luminaries all celebrating in unison both the release of Meek and the completion of the process as the Sixers advance in the playoffs. I mean, look at this. Just LOOK AT IT:

They’re all there! All of the champions. All of the winners. Phila Unite.

It’s Always Sunny is beloved because it captures the spirit of Philly better than any work before it. It’s perfectly raw and quirky. But had you written this script – that the owner springs the local rap star from prison and choppers him down to The Center for a playoff game, where he meets and greets the governor, owner of the Super Bowl champions (thankfully not Robert Kraft!), and countless other notables – it would have been thrown in the trash. Too absurd and unbelievable. Only that’s the half of it. In the same way the show captures the goofy spirit of the city, our sports teams have lived out that ethos these last few months. The Eagles’ Super Bowl run was dominated by players wearing dog masks on the field and crystalized with a guy in a Mummer’s costume giving an F-bomb laden speech on the steps of the Art Museum. And now the Sixers have co-opted the country’s unity cry to make it uniquely and delightfully their own, a mix of gratifying harvest of the fruits of their labor and real-world social-justice stuff that somehow unites conservative and liberal power brokers alike, all with a vested interest in the hometown squad. What a moment.

Sixers playoff hoodies are in-stock at Fanatics and guaranteed to deliver by Friday or it’s FREE. I have one and can assure you, it’s awesome. Get one here.

 

Notes:

The TNT broadcast of the series was awful. I’m usually a fan of Brian Anderson, but he and Kevin McHale were pathetically dreadful. Neither sounded like they did any research, or cared to. This was a series-long problem, but it was most glaring last night. Here’s Brian Anderson talking about the process and Bryan Colangelo:

“You got to give a lot of credit to Bryan Colangelo, twice he’s won executive of the year, and he has orchestrated this process and, maybe most importantly, Kevin, he has stuck with his head coach.”

Loooooooool. I’m not here to take anything away from the job Colangelo has done this season. If not for his tinkering, they would not be in this position. However, there seems to be a great white-washing by the Sixers and media alike with regards to Sam Hinkie, and I get that. If you don’t want to mention him, fine. But to claim that Colangelo is solely responsible for this is laughable.

Mind you, this was after Anderson noted that Meek Mill was attending his first game in-person. Derp. He’s been in jail since November, not 1992. Jesus. How are you not aware of these basic, fact-checkable things? Good riddance to that crew, I think.

 

Fun stat.

I’d respond to the handful of assholes who always respond with something derogatory about Villanova, but I’ll just point them to those Tweets earlier in this post.

 

This is good:

This might be better:

https://twitter.com/CFJastrzembski/status/988979195291275269

These takes aged well:

This one was never good in the first place:

Jason promptly deleted that Tweet and claimed that he was simply referencing the crowd at the game. I bet. His original Tweet was needlessly silly at best, and borderline racist at worst. I look forward to the Boston journos coming to town.

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