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Sixers

Michael Carter-Williams fires back at critics of 76ers' tanking

    by Jonathan Tannenwald
    Published 

We already knew that Michael Carter-Williams is a pretty good point guard. On Thursday we found out that he's a pretty good writer too.

(Or at least that he has a pretty good ghostwriter. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.)

Carter-Williams is the newest contributor to The Players' Tribune, the website founded by Derek Jeter to give athletes a direct platform to say what's on their minds. MCW's first piece, which you can read here, is long and quite thoughtful. He eloquently fires back at critics of the 76ers' tanking strategy, and at those who may think that the players don't care about racking up so many losses.

Here's an excerpt that I think is the most powerful part of the essay:

You can question my shooting. You can question my ceiling. Just don't question if I'm giving my all every single night. Don't talk to me about tanking. 

The media creates this narrative and repeats it over and over. That's how Stephen A. Smith ends up in our locker room with a big smile on his face. I'm not picking on him. I know he's playing a character. He knows he's playing a character. But what happens when we break the streak by going out and beating Detroit that night? Now it's another story. After the game, a lot of the reporters didn't even stick around. The ones that did weren't prepared. They didn't ask us about the specifics of the game. They made up questions on the spot, like, "Uh, hey, you guys won … so how do you feel?" 

We weren't the story anymore. They were on to the next thing. Stephen A. didn't really stick around. I guess he had a plane to catch. Believe me, I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure he doesn't come back for the same reason.

There's some humor, too - most notably Carter-Williams admitting that at the peak of last season's struggles, he watched Ellen DeGeneres' afternoon talk show to take his mind off all the losing.