Be honest: You knew this was going to happen. Joel Embiid only played 31 games. Dario Saric was only good for half a season and ended the year on a bum note. Both of them played for a bottom-five NBA team. Malcoln Brogdon put up 75 games' worth of competent-plus numbers for a team that made the playoffs. Him winning Rookie of the Year at Monday night's first-ever NBA Awards was as inevitable as Drake making a joke about his Instagram exes during the opening monlogue, and even hours before it was announced, it seemed like Sixers Twitter was getting testy in anticipation.
But you know what? It's fine. No, I don't believe Malcolm Brogdon deserved to win over Joel Embiid by any stretch of the imagination -- Dario's case is a little more arguable than we'd probably want to acknowledge -- and I agree with everyone else cackling over how ridiculous Brogdon beating Embiid is gonna seem five years, five months, five JoJo tweets from now. But I'm also kinda looking forward to those next five years, because The Process just got itself a hilariously innocuous new mortal enemy.
By most accounts, Brogdon seems like a pretty harmless dude. He seems destined to be the 15th best point guard in the league -- the kind of guy who'll get traded in a package for a legit star at least three times in his career by a team attempting to go over the top. His understandable reaction upon accepting the Rookie of the Year award was the slightly over-eager excitement of a guy who hasn't had to give a ton of acceptance speeches in his life; not exactly the coolest dude on the block, but one you can't really hate on either.
[Sixers Twitter shuts down Bucks' Rookie of the Year bragging]
Well, unless you're a Sixers fan. If Sixers fans have demonstrated one thing over the past four seasons, it's that it's not particularly hard for us to hate on anyone, and a well-meaning rookie point guard with a hearty smile is as easy a target as the next. And now, Malcolm Brogdon will feel the true wrath of Process pettiness.
When Malcolm Brogdon takes the floor at the Wells Fargo Center next year, he will be booed. When Malcolm Brogdon steps in a Wawa next year, he will be booed. If Malcolm Brogdon attempts to stream a song by Hall & Oates or Boyz II Men next year, he will be booed by his Spotify account. Verily, Malcolm Brogdon's NBA existence is about to be very largely defined by just how much hot air the Philly Phaithful is gonna expend just so he never forgets our outrage over how he had the temerity to win an award that one time. (And actually showed up to accept it!)
It's gonna be a lot of fun -- not like the next few seasons will likely be lacking in fun to begin with -- and at the end of the day, we'll probably get far more joy out of Brogdon's Sixers supervillainy than we would have in a single statue in Embiid's soon-to-be-very-cramped trophy case. JoJo himself seems fine with the L, and that's because he knows he has us behind to pick up the vengeful slack. That's what us Process Trusters are good for: We're bitter, stupid and endlessly vindictive so you don't have to be.
