It’s August 12, 2020, inside the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. Approximately five months earlier, the NBA and most everything else in the world was put on pause for the COVID-19 pandemic. Right then and there, the Miami Heat lead the Oklahoma City Thunder 115-113 with 11.6 seconds left in the game, and almost every single Sixers fan is absolutely locked in.
You all probably know what happens next:
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the one, the only, THE Mike Muscala shot.
Even Sixers fans who aren’t terminally online likely understand the significance of this three-pointer by now. The team itself thanked Muscala during a timeout in 2024 at Wells Fargo when he returned as an opposing player. It’s the shot that gave the Sixers Tyrese Maxey, and breathed life into the franchise at a time when it was desperately needed.
However, saying this shot alone put Maxey in Philadelphia is misleading. Rather, this fateful three from Muscala was the climax of a series of nearly improbable events that all had to break in one exact specific way for Maxey being a Sixer to be the end result.
The full story actually starts way back on Nov. 1, 2016, when the Thunder traded Ersan Illyasova and their fateful top-20 protected 2020 first-round pick for the Sixers’ Jerami Grant. That pick would be in Philadelphia’s possession for less than a year, when the team traded it to the Orlando Magic during the 2017 NBA trade as a part of a package to move up in the first round and select Latvia’s Anzejs Pasecniks with the 25th overall pick — who still to this day has never played a game in a Sixers’ uniform.
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OKC’s 2020 protected first-round pick would belong to Orlando until the 2019 trade deadline, when the Sixers again made a deal with the Magic that sent Markelle Fultz their way, and that very same top-20 protected pick (as well as Jonathon Simmons) back to Philly once again. A full 20 months before Maxey even heard his name called on draft night, the Sixers had already acquired, then distributed, then reacquired the very pick he would be taken with.
On top of all of this, it was still far from a guarantee that the pick would convey from OKC back to Philly that year. Sam Presti had just dealt both Russell Westbrook and Paul George in the summer of 2019, and OKC was projected to finish 11th in the Western Conference and land in the lottery, wherein they would hang on to the protected 2020 pick they dealt for Jerami Grant back in 2016. Unlike other protected firsts that often convey to the subsequent year if they land within the protected range, this OKC first would turn into a far less desirable pair of second-round picks if it didn’t go to the Sixers in 2020. This is why when the Sixers traded Fultz to the Magic for a first-round pick, many wanted to use air quotes when discussing the pick.
But thanks to the sheer spite of a then-recently acquired 34-year-old Chris Paul wanting to prove everyone wrong, and second-year Shai Gilgeous-Alexander being much better than anyone predicted, the Thunder were lights out during the first half of the 2019-20 season. They raced out to a 40-24 record that put them as one of the top 10 teams in the NBA when the season halted mid-March, meaning that if the league were to terminate play right then and there due to the pandemic, the Sixers would have received the 21st overall pick in the draft and perhaps still wound up with Maxey.
Of course, that’s not how things transpired. Basketball returned in late July when the NBA invited 22 teams to the Disney bubble to finish what they started. Instead of hopping straight into postseason action, each team played eight games to reacclimate themselves to game action while also finishing out regular season positioning.
Through two weeks of bubble play (a sentence that still doesn’t feel real even five years later), the Thunder were now 43-27 and were just ever so slightly holding onto a top-10 record in the league. Just ahead of them at 44-27 was the Miami Heat squad they were set to face on Aug. 12, while the Pacers and Jazz sat just behind them with identical 43-28 records. With only two games left to play and OKC already locked into a seed from 4-6 in the West, there wasn’t much incentive for them to push to close out the regular season. There was no homecourt advantage in the bubble, and they’d already avoided first-round matchups with both the Lakers and the Clippers, the two clear top teams in the West through most of that season. A loss to Miami that night would guarantee that the Heat finished ahead of them in the overall standings while also giving ample leeway for the Jazz and Pacers to pass them in the final record, bumping the projected pick down to the dreaded 20-slot and costing the Sixers the asset altogether.
It would be extra salt in the wound to what had been, prior to 2025, the most unfortunate season of the Embiid era. Much like keeping the third-overall pick in this past year’s draft was absolutely needed as a silver lining to a dismal year, the Sixers and their fans needed to keep this pick if serious playoff contention wasn’t on the table.
This is all prelude to the game itself — which, for those who don’t remember, was clinically insane. Both Miami and OKC started their normal players in the first half, and the Heat raced out to a huge lead thanks to five threes from Duncan Robinson. The second half was when the benches took over, and the Sixers’ hopes hinged on an OKC rotation of Muscala, Darius Bazley, Abdel Nader, Nerlens Noel, Terrance Ferguson, Devon Hall, and Hamidou Diallo (amazing that four out of those seven have played for the Sixers).
It didn’t look good through three quarters, as the Heat led 100-82 and were almost certainly cruising to a blowout win. That’s when a hero stepped to the floor — and no it was not Muscala. The man donning the cape for the next 11 minutes of that game was actually Bazley, who played one of the best games of his entire life.
Bazley was just a rookie at the time, and though he’d shown considerable talent as a defensive player, his offense was still largely a work in progress. But not that night, as he scored an improbable sixteen points in the fourth quarter alone that night, almost single handedly willing the Thunder back into the game.
Bazley has played 237 total games in his NBA career, and that night he made five threes, setting a single-game career best that he is yet to surpass. As a matter of fact, he’s only had 20 games in his career where he’s made multiple threes. Yet that day he couldn’t miss. All of Bazley’s prior heroics set up the play that everyone actually remembers.
Funnily enough, Muscala had not scored a single point through the first 47 minutes of the game. By his normal standards, he was having an awful night, not the game he’d be best remembered for when he retired.
But that all changed with 40 seconds left on the clock, when he first got a rebound, kicked the ball back out, then relocated to the left corner for the first of his two ever important threes. A Solomon Hill layup put Miami back in front, but left just enough time for Muscala to leak out to the right wing for his famous three with just over five seconds remaining.
(Again, shoutout to Bazley for maybe the best pass of his career on this play).
A missed three from Tyler Herro ended the game, giving OKC the win, and sending Sixers fans into a celebratory joy they had rarely experienced that season (including Mike himself). With the dub, the Thunder were guaranteed to finish no lower than 10th in the NBA’s overall standings, guaranteeing the pick to land outside the top-20 of the draft and convey to the Sixers after all that time. OKC would go on to lose its final regular season against the Clippers, making it so that the win over Miami was absolutely necessary for the pick to make its way to Philly.
(Sixers Adam actually reminded me that the Sixers’ themselves actually could’ve prevented this outcome by winning more games in the bubble themselves, as they’d given up the right to their own pick in the Tobias Harris trade a year prior. If they’d gone 3-1 in their last four games, they would have passed OKC and lost their potential pick. Instead, the Sixers crashed down the stretch with a three-game losing streak before blowing out the Rockets in a final game that didn’t matter at all).
This isn’t even the end of all the unlikely events that transpired for the Sixers to wind up with Maxey. Twenty teams still needed to pass on him in the draft for him to fall all the way to Philadelphia, which seemed like pretty wishful thinking with how highly he was regarded as a prospect by some, often appearing in the top 15 of Big Boards. Not to mention, in a world where the pandemic doesn’t prematurely end the college basketball season, does Maxey go on a crazy tournament run for Kentucky in March and boost his draft stock well outside the Sixers’ range?
Play Ping Pong With DarylOver the past decade, there have been so many different oddities to befall the Sixers that seem almost impossible. Like every single unlucky break that needed to happen, happened. From the entire Fultz saga, to Zhaire Smith, to even everything that’s happened with Embiid’s health since January 2024, it’s felt like the Sixers are constantly living with the bleakest possible outcome.
But not so with Maxey. It’s the rare instance where the Sixers were fortunate to a degree that seems comical. Every single thing needed to bounce in the exact right way for the team to wind up with the 21st overall pick in 2020, and for the Kentucky point guard to still be on the board.
To again bring this article back to a reference that made more sense in 2020, it feels like there were 14,000,605 possible timelines, and we’re living in the one where Maxey plays for the Sixers.
Five years removed from the shot, Muscala has only grown in popularity amongst Sixers’ fans. From semi-joking remarks that his number should be raised to the rafters in Wells Fargo, to his jersey actually being retired at Live Ricky V, to people actively congratulating him in 2025 on his new role as an assistant coach with the Phoenix Suns, “Moose” has one of the highest approval ratings in the city. That’s the reputation you get when fans loved your shot enough to set it to Titanic music.
It’s wild to think we’re already five years into the Maxey era. In the NBA, it’s impossible to predict who will be on what team even a year from now, but most if not all fans would want Maxey to still be hooping in Philadelphia in 2030 and beyond. And I’m sure there will still be people celebrating the 10th and maybe even 15th anniversary of Muscala’s shot down the line, just to remember an absurdly improbable time when everything actually broke in the exact perfect way the Sixers needed it to.
Daniel Olinger is a writer for the Rights To Ricky Sanchez, and author of “The Danny” column, even though he refuses to be called that in person. He can be followed on X @dan_olinger.
“The Danny” is brought to you by the Official Realtor Of The Process, Adam Ksebe.