{"id":917142,"date":"2026-10-01T23:22:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T23:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/917142\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T23:22:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T23:22:23","slug":"sacrifice-is-a-good-thing-actually","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/917142\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Sacrifice\u2019 is a good thing, actually"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jabari Walker is unlikely to be in the Sixers\u2019 rotation to start the 2026-27 season.<\/p>\n

As a guy who had to work his way up from a two-way spot to a standard deal last season, he understands his role is simply to be ready, no matter what the team asks of him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m more in the mindset of just doing what I can every day to be an asset to this team,\u201d Walker said. \u201cThese are my brothers at the end of the day. \u2026 I have a relationship with all of them, so it\u2019s something bigger than just being a teammate.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Walker\u2019s mentality is ideal for the 14th guy on the roster, it was a sentiment shared by many on media day Monday \u2014 including from arguably the best player to ever walk the earth, LeBron James.<\/p>\n

VJ Edgecombe, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft who was named to the All-Rookie First Team, has been a topic of conversation. How will Edgecombe adjust his game while still developing alongside such a star-studded team?<\/p>\n

James made a simple point \u2014 everyone will have to adjust.<\/p>\n

Including the 41-year-old, 22-time All-Star.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think with the group of guys, no one mentioned that everybody\u2019s role will probably be different,\u201d James said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s for the greater good, if we want to accomplish something that\u2019s really, really important. Like if we say that we want to be something special, there will be a collective sacrificing in a good way. Sometimes in sports, people hear sacrificing \u2026 people start thinking negatively about it. It\u2019s not a negative thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every player, including the team\u2019s stars, shared that sentiment. When Jaylen Brown was asked who would be the \u201calpha\u201d on this Sixers team by a national reporter, Brown dismissed the question immediately. After all, even the person who came up with the theory of the \u201calpha wolf\u201d has since debunked his own research<\/a>. In fact, we\u2019ve learned wolf packs are simply regular families, doing whatever is necessary for survival.<\/p>\n

Maybe not an apples-to-apples comparison to a professional basketball team, but everyone has to eat. In the case of the Sixers, they\u2019ll be looking to wins over stats for nourishment.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike [James] said, sacrifice has a negative connotation, but has its perks and its benefits,\u201d Brown said. \u201cAnytime you\u2019re going for something great, something of high metric, it\u2019s going to take a level of sacrifice. So that\u2019s just the understanding that someone like him, who has been great all his life, he understands sacrifice at a high level, and I agree with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nobody has felt the pain of the Sixers\u2019 recent failures more than Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey. Embiid is by far the longest-tenured Sixer. In fact, he\u2019s the third longest-tenured athlete in Philadelphia after the Flyers\u2019 Sean Couturier and Eagles\u2019 Lane Johnson. After Embiid is Maxey. The drop-off to the third longest-tenured Sixer is quite steep.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s obvious they\u2019re willing to scale back in any capacity in order to finally get over the second-round hump and win the franchise\u2019s first championship since before LeBron was born.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne through 17, 18, we got the talent. Whatever,\u201d Maxey said. \u201cBut if we\u2019re not willing to sacrifice, we\u2019re not willing to put in the work, it ain\u2019t gonna mean nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s hard to win,\u201d Embiid said. \u201cI haven\u2019t done it. Feel like I know what it takes, but it is hard to win, man. You need that consistency. You need to get guys on the same page. But feel like this year we have that.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the first day of training camp, the team\u2019s first full practice together, head coach Nick Nurse didn\u2019t like the use of the word \u201csacrifice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSacrifice just seems like such a negative term to me,\u201d Nurse said at practice Monday, \u201cand I\u2019d rather like really emphasize being who you are, right? But maybe we need you to do something super special for our team at this moment, and you have the abilities to do it. Then let\u2019s do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But luckily for him, his players don\u2019t see it that way.<\/p>\n

James\u2019 perspective was a little different. Instead of viewing the word \u201csacrifice\u201d as a negative, why can\u2019t it be a positive?<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many guys that\u2019s been in our league over the course of my career that\u2019s never made a sacrifice in their career,\u201d James said, \u201cand they average 20, 22 points per game and they\u2019ve had one or two postseason appearances and zero postseason wins. If that\u2019s the way you want your career to be then, that\u2019s fine, everyone has different goals. But I don\u2019t think anybody downstairs or I don\u2019t think anybody in the locker room, have that feeling, or want their career to be like that, or we wouldn\u2019t be here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sacrificing for a greater good is not only positive, but laudable.<\/p>\n

From LeBron James to Jabari Walker and every player in between, it\u2019s what the Sixers will have to do to accomplish their ultimate goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jabari Walker is unlikely to be in the Sixers\u2019 rotation to start the 2026-27 season. As a guy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":917143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,84394,82],"class_list":["post-917142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sixers-analysis","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/917143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}