Sunday night’s Game 7 against the Atlanta Hawks was an abject failure for the Philadelphia 76ers. It was the culmination of a years-long philosophy of giving Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons just one more season together. Multiple front office configurations and head coaches later the duo was unable to get the job once again. In fairness to Joel Embiid, who played the entire series against the Hawks with a tear in his meniscus, there were far more impactful failures than the big man’s propensity for being loose with his handle or lazy with his passes, which resulted in eight turnovers.

While a case can be made that the Philadelphia’s second-leading scorer on the year Tobias Harris needed to be more efficient from the field – including no fewer than four missed layups – Game 7’s failure and that of the series as a whole came down to Ben Simmons.

As the dust began to settle from the Sixers Game 7 loss, two writers’ inability to convey quotes in their proper context took what had been a rather large social media fire and turned it into a fire that would make Mance Rayder proud. Let’s take a look at how the two offenders took things from bad to worse:

The Ink-Stained Retch

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist and now part-time radio host Marcus Hayes got the festivities started in the post game media availability with Ben Simmons when he blatantly misconstrued a response from head coach Doc Rivers.

Here’s the original question and response from Rivers’ availability:

Reporter: Doc, do you think Ben Simmons could still be a point guard for a championship team like the one you guys want to become?

Rivers: Yeah, David, I don’t that question or the answer to that right now. Um… you know, so I don’t know the answer to that.

Now, here’s how Marcus Hayes took creative liberties with that exchange when he repackaged it in a question to Ben Simmons:

Hayes: Ben, Doc was asked, “Do you think Ben Simmons will be a point guard here next year?” He said, “I don’t know the answer that.” Would you be willing to consider a  position change, to be a forward if you stay in Philadelphia or even if you went  somewhere else?

Simmons: I gotta do what I gotta do and work on my game to get better. That’s not my focus right now… Never let the highs get too high and the lows get too low… Get my mind right, get my body right for next season, do what I can control.

A number of people, including the maestro, took Hayes to task for turning gold into garbage:

Not great. At least Hayes acknowledged it, but it’s important to point out that there’s now got to be some sort of internal damage control by the Sixers, who have likely already attempted to clarify that while the coach appeared to question the viability of the player’s championship aspirations as a point guard, he didn’t question the player’s ability to play the position.

As an aside, the Inside the NBA crew dissected the original answer at length, with Kenny Smith saying Rivers should’ve protected his young player and said something to the effect of, “Yes, but there’s work to do.” Meanwhile Shaq and Charles Barkley agreed Simmons’ fear of shooting put his coach in a tough spot.

The Other Rich Hofmann

I always liked Rich Hofmann. He always played well off Michael Barkann on Daily News Live. Wait. That’s the other one. Right. The Athletic‘s Rich Hofmann, whose work I enjoyed at Philly Voice but refuse to pay for at his current employer, is usually a rock-solid beat writer. However, his slip-up on Sunday night made Marcus Hayes’ error pale in comparison.

Embiid was asked about when the realization sunk in that the championship belief he held all season wasn’t going to come to fruition. The center gave a lengthy answer that began with him noting he’d be honest and then proceeded to provide a multiple-possession breakdown about what he believed was the turning point of the game. The first play in Embiid’s breakdown was, of course, this one in which Ben Simmons passed up a surefire dunk to dish the ball to Matisse Thybulle, who was fouled and went 1-2 from the line:

Embiid’s on-court reaction was what you’d expect:

The problem is that the usually-reliable Hofmann – presumably in a rush to transcribe the first part of the quote – only tweeted what many ran with as Embiid burying Simmons:

That tweet racked up over three thousand retweets as fans, pundits, and observers rejoiced over Embiid’s roasting of the man pegged to be his co-star in a title push:

Except Hofmann’s viral selective quote left out some critical context, namely the part where Embiid listed a number of ensuing plays and threw some blame on himself. Unfortunately, it took Hofmann over ten minutes to put out the full quote:

Not good.

Now, was Embiid doing damage control? Did he realize after saying he was going to be honest that he needed to buy time to run back some plays that followed the Simmons catastrophe so as to prevent headlines saying he wanted Simmons out of town? Maybe. However, what we have here is a failure to communicate. A number of outlets through COVID times haven’t cut live to post game press conferences for a number of reasons, so writers and reporters have an even bigger burden of responsibility to get it right. Otherwise, things like this can happen in the minutes from when a reporter types up the eye-grabbing portion of a quote to when it actually goes out on TV.

When you add up Hayes’ and Hofmann’s issues doing their respective jobs as a columnist and reporter, you end up with this:

Maybe Ben Simmons will be gone. Maybe he should be. But the media who cover the team need to remember it’s more important to be right than first.