Meek Mill’s Freezing Cold Take Is Exactly Why The Process Needed To Happen

by Boobie

Meek Mill’s long-awaited release from prison happily coincided with Game 5 of the Philadelphia 76ers’ first-round playoff run, and the team wasted no time at all co-opting the goodwill he’s had in the city since the title track of his studio album soundtracked the Eagles’ improbable Super Bowl run. The Sixers transported Meek directly from jail to the Wells Fargo Center via chopper for the game, where, in front of a raucous crowd, he rang a replica of the Liberty Bell, a pregame tradition not unlike baseball’s ceremonial pitch that takes on the significance of the participant.

Freezing Cold Takes, the internet’s premier compiler of old incorrect opinions and generally damning tweets, was there to step on the moment:

You can’t really be mad about it, considering the entire purpose of the account is to fry people indiscriminately for their dated opinions, and has called plenty of people with bad takes about the Process to the carpet in recent weeks. However, dredging up this tweet in particular, while on the surface is meant to make fun of Meek for being a bandwagon fan, also serves a far more important, indirect purpose: It’s yet another example of why the Process was so necessary in the first place.

For as long as I can remember, Philadelphia has considered itself more of a college basketball city than an NBA city. Sure, fans rallied around some of Allen Iverson’s teams, but that’s more of a reflection of Iverson’s singular magnetism than the organization or the fanbase itself. In 2010, when Meek tweeted that he was on the hunt for a new team and in fact had been for some time, the college basketball landscape had not yet shifted the way it has now. The blue bloods were always the blue bloods, but the one-and-done era had not yet entirely overtaken the sport and allowed programs to re-stock every single year with concentrated elite talent to replace the wave they had just lost to the NBA. This mostly rendered mid-majors like St. Joe’s, Temple, La Salle, and Penn fun local distractions, rather than teams that could potentially contend at the highest level of the sport.

While that shift was happening, “fun local distraction” was basically the ceiling for the Sixers, and had been for the last couple of decades before the Process started. There with exceptions, like the 2001 Finals run, and the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals appearance (aided by the Bulls injury woes), but the teams weren’t even that fun or that distracting. It’s become hackneyed to say that the worst place to be in the NBA is on “the treadmill of mediocrity,” but stuck in the middle with no path to contention is exactly where the team was, and it was extremely uninspiring. It’s hard to blame anyone who, like Meek, sought out a team with an actual future and hopes of title contention. It takes two teams to leave one for another, and while LeBron and Chris Bosh joining Dwyane Wade in South Beach was as good an incentive to jump ship as just about any in NBA history, the Sixers were just as qualified to lose fans to attrition as any non-Kings or -Timberwolves team in the NBA.

Here’s the thing Freezing Cold Takes won’t tell you, though — the Heat were only a secondary team for Meek, because even before the Process began, when the teams went head-to-head, he was talking shit and rooting for the Sixers:

This was an underrated nice thing about rooting for the Sixers during the compiling-assets years: It offered an opportunity to take in the rest of the NBA, without worrying about the implications for the Sixers themselves. Fans could enjoy the narrative of LeBron eventually leaving the Heat and coming back to Cleveland without stressing about how the team might defend the LeBron-Kyrie Irving pick-and-roll. They could enjoy the Warriors unexpected rise and subsequent heel-turn without wondering if we had anyone who could take advantage of the Lineup of Death. Competitiveness was far enough in the future that the small stuff didn’t matter, because there was no way to predict what those strategic and narrative questions would be in 2020 when it was time for the core we’d eventually put together to contend.

NBA fans do this all the time, of course, but that distance allowed for more emotional freelancing than the average fan is allowed. As Sixers fans, we’re facing these questions earlier than expected because our team is ahead of schedule, but no one could view that as a bad thing. The local NCAA/NBA equation has flipped accordingly, hence the consistent sellout crowds and legit home court advantage.

Meek may not have paid much attention during the Process, but turning his attention elsewhere was a symptom of why the Process was necessary, and showing up at the Wells Fargo Center immediately after getting out of prison, along with the crowd that greeted him, refutes one of the most pointless arguments against it — that those fans who the team was “disrespecting” during the necessary lean years would be lost for good.

Meek Mill is emblematic of the sort of fan that even the notoriously gate-keeping hardcore Process Trusters welcome back with open arms — the kind who was frustrated with mediocrity, stopped paying attention when things were bad without staking claim to any sort of “this is a disgrace” moralizing, and is enjoying the team now that they’re good again. The average fan didn’t leave; they were either radicalized or went dormant for a couple of years. Between his music career, and his status as a fighter for prison and parole reform, a symbol of the Sixers fandom is one of the least important platforms Meek holds. But Meek’s old tweet shows us exactly why he’s repping for the Sixers again: He’s been waiting a long time for a winner. For both Meek personally, and the fanbase he represents — it’s good to have you back.