This truncated Daryl Morey quote is making the rounds. It’s from the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference up in Boston, which took place over the weekend:

There’s a longer transcription out there that adds this to the end: “The aggregators are gonna have a field day with this. But they (the fans) were less angry, was my perception. I don’t know for sure. It’s not like you’re surveying everyone. How angry are you? And that really threw me, because to me, I’m just trying to win the title. And so the year before, for the way we measure it was objectively better, even though a zero on the Boolean Scale I’m judged on, so it should all be the same, and that surprised me. 

Obviously everyone latched on to the comment about angry Sixers fans. You can tell that Morey is joking when he says it. He’s being a little tongue-in-cheek, but as a general practice maybe don’t do that joke when the team is 22-41, the season is lost, Joel Embiid might be cooked, and Podcast P can’t stay healthy.

What he’s really talking about here is his interest in fan reaction, comparatively. In 2023, it was the Boston loss in game 7 of the second round. In 2024, it was the Knicks in six, in the first round. He’s kind of wondering why fans weren’t as angry about the Knicks loss as the Celtics loss. That’s because a lot of fans were checked out. Embiid was injured, missed most of the spring, and came back in April. They had to go through the play-in tournament just to make the postseason. Everyone knew they had zero chance with a hobbled Embiid and Tyrese Maxey surrounded by role players. The reason Knicks fans took over the Wells Fargo Center is because Sixers fans weren’t into it. There was no buzz for that team, therefore fans were less angry about the loss. Compare it to the year before, when they choked up a 3-2 lead and had a chance to finish off the Celtics at home in game 6 to go to the ECF for the first time in almost a quarter-Centruy. But they couldn’t do it and basically quit at the end. That’s why the fans were more angry, because they invested more of their time, money, and emotion, and got the same thing in the return, which was jack shit.

You do have to laugh at the Boolean Scale quote, which is good. The Boolean Scale is a computer programming concept where the only data values are true or false. Translated into Philly sports language, you either win a title or you don’t. Daryl is rhetorically asking, that if the value is false in both playoff exits, then why isn’t the fan  reaction consistent? That’s an error in believing that the Philadelphia sports fan is a binary entity, the product of Daryl Morey consistently thinking that everything in life can be broken down as some sort of data set.