Second year guard Michael Carter-Williams expects to come off the bench in his season debut Thursday night, nearly seven months after undergoing right shoulder surgery.
MCW penned a thoughtful piece detailing just what it’s like to play for the NBA’s worst team –- last season’s Rookie of the Year says he takes his mind of the soul-crushing losses by watching some daytime television.
As you might expect, the Philadelphia Sixers’ tanking plan isn’t something Carter-Williams is too jazzed to discuss.
Per The Players’ Tribune:
Losing sucks. I don’t care how much money you make or what stats you put up. If you’re competitive enough to make it to the NBA, losing is absolutely brutal. If it’s a night game, you get home around midnight and your mind is racing. It’s almost impossible to sleep. You keep visualizing every game-changing play, trying to figure out what you could’ve done better. You beat yourself up. You try not to look at your texts. If SportsCenter comes on, it only makes you mad. […] Every guy in the league deals with losing in his own way. Some come home, turn on the Xbox and try to get revenge on NBA 2K. The vets might watch a movie with the kids or jump in the hyperbaric chamber. The more progressive guys are turning to meditation and yoga.
I’m too impatient for that stuff. For me, it’s all about Ellen. I just think she’s awesome. So every weekday at 4 p.m., my stepfather and I pause the basketball talk, grab some snacks and watch The Ellen Degeneres Show. It might sound funny, but this is one of the ways I’m able to get away from the frustration of losing. Last winter, when we went on a near-historic losing streak, I was not a fun guy to be around.
Grown men are going to go out and purposely mail it in for a one-in-four shot at drafting somebody who might someday take their job? Nope.
In the middle of the playoff race, a race we were decidedly not in, it seemed like the entire media spotlight was on us. And trust me, I get it. We had lost 26 games in a row. Of course, our roster had lost a combined 200-plus games to injury and we had used more than 20 different players in the lineup since opening night. That didn’t seem to be a part of the conversation. All anybody was talking about was “tanking.”
