The last week has been rough for 76ers fans. First, they found out the team decided to part ways with Nerlens Noel prior to the NBA trade deadline:
Then, they learned that Ben Simmons won’t play at all during his rookie season due to a lingering foot injury:
And on Monday, they discovered Joel Embiid will be out "indefinitely" as well as a result of swelling in his injured left knee:
So the Sixers loyal fanbase has once again been forced to look towards the future for any signs of hope.
Don’t tell that to Kevin Hart, though. The Philadelphia native has stuck with the Sixers through their various ups and downs in recent years, and on Monday night, he was once again front and center for the team’s game against the Warriors at the Wells Fargo Center in Philly. Hart rang a bell for the team during pregame ceremonies before taking a courtside seat.
And he spent a majority of the game heckling the Warriors players and trying to get under their skin. Here’s Hart attempting to talk some trash to Steph Curry:
He talked trash to other Warriors players, too. Draymond Green and Klay Thompson, in particular, bore the brunt of Hart’s heckling, and after the game, they were both asked to talk about where Hart stacks up in terms of NBA trash talkers.
Green actually gave him some credit. He said that Hart is a better trash talker than Drake, who infamously ripped Green and his teammates during a game earlier this season.
"Kevin, he’s louder," Green said when Warriors beat writer Anthony Slater asked him to compare Hart to Drake. "That’s what he does. So definitely him. By far. Drake was talking a lot, but his voice just don’t carry like Kevin’s...They both was going at it pretty tough. But both of their teams lost, so that was good. We would never hear the end of it had we lost to either one of their teams."
But Thompson wasn’t ready to give Hart that much credit. He acknowledged hearing Hart screaming at the Warriors during the game, but Thompson said that he was pretty much a "non-factor."
"Non-factor. Kevin Hart was a non-factor," he said. "He was [trying]. But it started with that terrible…he couldn’t beat that drum he had. It was too quiet. From then on, just non-factor. Tried his hardest, but non-factor."
For what it’s worth, the Warriors didn’t play one of their better games of the season. They shot just 6-for-29 from behind the three-point line, and Curry was ice-cold from long distance:
But the Warriors still ended up winning 119-108. And there wasn’t anything Hart could say or do to stop it.
