Avi Wolfman-Arent

Today on Studio 2: Does pop culture kinda suck now? Or has our nostalgia-tinged pessimism just been sent into overdrive? We discuss with Spencer Kornhaber from the Atlantic (@skornhaber). Tune in at noon on WHYY or You Tube: youtube.com/watch?v=fvPNYU…

@tmiraglia1 Yep. Terrible until the biggest three games of the season. Hard to explain. Although part of it is probably having Maxey stay in to help on the glass.

@Avi_WA That’s really interesting. As a Sixers fan, they have been terrible on the defensive glass.

Boston rebounded just 15.1% of their misses in Game 6 and 17.9% in Game 7. Those are their 2nd and 4th worst offensive rebounding games of the entire season. After getting killed on the glass in Games 3 and 4...the Sixers shut down the Celtics' offensive-rebounding machine

Stats via @cleantheglass

The Celtics started their season by daring VJ Edgecombe to shoot threes and losing. The Celtics ended their season by daring VJ Edgecombe to shoot threes and losing.

“Great news Liz Lemon! The little guy on your other side is named Bob Dylan! He’s also good at ping pong! (Low, serious voice) he lives in the sand, it’s very confusing”

@TyJohnsonNews Well this scenario assumes a good shooting team somehow is shooting terribly... But either way the Celtics should not be winning 75% of these games with a scoring margin that suggests they're a 1 seed playing a lottery team. You can't look at that gap and say it's all talent.

@Avi_WA 10 more in TWENTY games. Sixers haven’t had as many good players. That is a far bigger issue than 30 points over 20 games.

In the Embiid era, the Sixers have played 20 playoff games against the Celtics. They are 5-15 in those 20 games. The Sixers have made 198 threes in those games and shot 31.7% from beyond the arc. The Celtics have made 287 threes in those games and shot 37.4% from beyond.

@TyJohnsonNews In other words...even if the Celtics were completely ice cold over those 20 games...way colder than you could ever reasonably expect them to be...they'd still be winning the three-point battle in this head-to-head.

@TyJohnsonNews Sure. But taking good shots is. And...incredibly...if you reverse the percentages...the Celtics would *still* have made 10 more threes than the Sixers over those 20 games.

Each series is a little different, but it's all a variation on the same theme. The Celtics embrace the math or the analytics or whatever you wanna call it. The Sixers try to out-talent them. It doesn't work.

That's 267 more points scored on threes for the Celtics...13 points per game. One team consistently playing a modern brand of basketball...the other insisting it can overcome this with a different style despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.

@TrillBroDude would be nice if he applied the same level of coaching intensity to the regular season. but yeah, so far i can't argue with his playoff strategies against the Knicks or Celtics. Dealt a bad hand in both and done pretty well.

@Avi_WA Derrick white turning into a pumpkin also been huge but yeah he’s doing the best with what we have. Really think he should get another year with a real (hopefully healthy) roster to see what we can do.

I know you’re not allowed to say anything nice about coaches in Philadelphia but I think Nick Nurse has done a really good job this postseason.

@TrillBroDude He's done enough to force C's into tough choices. When Queta plays the Sixers are really gumming up their offense. When Vooch is out there he's getting roasted on defense. Sixers are picking at their biggest (only?) weakness pretty well.

Massive talent gap. Awful depth. Maxey and VJ extremely streaky as scorers / on ball creators. Center rotation is worst in the playoffs. Outside of game one when they missed all their open shots they’ve went toe to toe with a much better team. Sucks it probably won’t matter.

@DavidEarly The Spurs lost eight of their final 9 games before getting the draft pick they'd use on Tim Duncan. This has been going on for a loooooong time. Sometimes small doses. Sometimes big. But it's nothing new and it ain't going away

Sixers were already following the warriors and thunder model at the time. They didn’t invent the wheel they just didn’t BS anyone about their product

@PHLY_Sixers Curious for your thoughts on Grimes' season and what his contract might look like this summer. Obviously not shooting great. Turnovers an issue. But still scoring pretty efficiently!

📬MAILBAGGGGGG!! Get it your last minute questions for the show today

(The Bahamian flag is in the center of the frame btw)

Sixers rookie VJ Edgecombe on Instagram:

@Benjami79640280 @gobirds27 @legsanity i'm with you. i think walking the tightrope to the next era is going to be tough given their salary and asset situation.

@Avi_WA @gobirds27 @legsanity I could see the logic here. But Joel playing like this right now gives us a way better title chance than any team I could see built around Maxey and VJ in the next like five years. Oh and we still owe Joel 58, 62, and 67 million dollars over the next three years

just really struggling to see the point of the Sixers this season. even if you didn't believe in you championship odds, surely you'd at least like to bolster your playoff chances so you can secure the extra revenue. hope they don't run out of gas before a potential play-in?

@gobirds27 @legsanity hey i get it. Jo is my favorite player ever. i'd rather give him a couple more cracks at a memorable playoff run. but I think morey's track record is clear. he cares about maximizing title odds...not fun playoff runs. and if that's your view...the pivot makes sense

@Avi_WA @legsanity I get that sentiment, but if that's the case then Morey, Brand, and co need to be purged and sent to the Hague. They're just wasting the years of the players that WANT to be here.