Here’s another great article I actually read earlier this morning by Bill Simmons about the Philadelphia 76ers.

For the last 4+ years, they’ve been tanking every season in order to capture as many high draft picks as possible. This has lead to them gaining two of the top, young players in the league right now: Joel Embiid, and Ben Simmons.

Bill starts the story out by bringing us into a moment in time: when he almost missed a flight because he stayed up late to watch Embiid go to work against the Los Angeles Lakers. He talks of all the players of the past whose games had been modeled in Embiid’s play during that game.

This is something my editors at the Missourian always preach to myself and my fellow reporters. They always tell us to begin our articles with a certain point of view, so that we can draw in the readers with a story before we get into the body of the article. I’ve been attempting to do that with my writing, and Bill’s article is actually a great example to model my own writing after.

He didn’t stop with Embiid though.

He then turned it into a list of the biggest winners of the first month, with Embiid and the Sixers at the top. He introduces us to things like the championship belt they mailed to LeBron James in 2012, the 50/40/90 club, the potential of young players and the NBA outlier who goes by the name Robert Covington.

I’ve always admired Bill’s work. His work on the “Four Days in October” documentary is some of the best I’ve ever seen in sports media, and I’ve been trying to model his own writing after my own.

This article is just another of Bill Simmons’ articles that I really enjoyed reading. As a basketball buff myself, Bill’s work is some of the best. I am a big fan, and I hope to one day raise my own writing to the same level that Bill has been at for years.