2022-23 Sixers will make everyone forget about 2019

We all know the story by now. The one where Kawhi Leonard’s four-bounce miracle shot catapults the Raptors past the Sixers and on to an eventual NBA championship in 2018-19. The following season both teams made radical changes and left scores of Sixers fans wondering “what if…”. The last three playoff seasons have found many masochists on twitter looking back and saying, “If the Sixers had won that game, they would have won it all.”

First, there’s no way of knowing what would have happened in those next two rounds. You can’t assume that the 76ers would have won it all just because Toronto did. Matchups and timing matter in the NBA and there are never any guarantees. Second, the Sixers absolutely had to dismantle that 2019 team because that series showed off their weaknesses as much as their strengths. There could be no “running it back”. (And Jimmy Butler was always going to go to Miami, no matter what happened with Harris or Simmons!)

All of this means that it’s time for us Philly fans to do the one thing that we do so poorly:  Let go of the past. We have had so few “shining moments” in Philadelphia that we cling to the memories of past hopes and almost glories. What might have been. It’s time to let go, and that starts by looking at what we have in front of us. A legitimately gifted team and real title contender. Maybe if we compare the 2018-19 Sixers with the 2022-23 team on paper it will help us all move forward and forget past failures. It’s time to heal.

If the 2018-19 Sixers could play the 2022-23 Sixers, who would win?

For openers, this is obviously all hypothetical. The ball has yet to be tipped for this season so we are left to analyze the current Sixers as they stand on paper. Which is fine, this is a healing exercise after all. This team will never actually play that team so all we have left is conjecture anyway. Watercoolers were made for conversations like this. Which team is better, 2018-19, or 2022-23? Let’s compare!

Coaching: Brett Brown vs. Doc Rivers – To be honest, I wish the gap between these two was wider. Beat up Brett all you like, but he made a lot of nice adjustments after the Sixers acquired Jimmy Butler and even more in the second round of the playoffs, even taking the ball away from Ben Simmons and giving it to Butler in an effort to hide Ben’s inadequacies. Rivers has a ring to his name and is a superior x’s and o’s guy but has been slow to try new things, trust his young guys, and mess…