(S28) PT 3 - What If?

[J0EB]

There's a lot that I feel like I could look back on and say it was a defining moment in my time in the league, and if any of these were to have changed even slightly, maybe things would be vastly different. The one that stands out most to me though is when Eph left Philly in free agency. I've thought a lot about my time in Philly, and how things ended up as they did, and it's something I've discussed a lot with teammates and on podcasts. But every time I try to think back to the start of Philly's decline, I always start with Eph's departure. While Eph was on the team, our LR was extremely active and enthusiastic, and we were really such a close knit group. Everyone in the LR was my best friend, and constantly hanging out with them was so much fun. However, the team itself wasn't that good, so we endured a lot of bad losses, and the LR started to turn sour. This eventually hit a breaking point, and Eph decided he wanted to leave the team for a combination of reasons. This hurt the LR and the spirit of the team badly, because Eph was really one of our best friends. I'm not sure if it was exactly from that point on, but the LR developed a very pessimistic and antagonistic atmosphere, and things only continued to unravel. I think that if Eph had stayed in Philly, while our team might've still sucked, our LR would've recovered and we wouldn't have seen such a disastrous outcome. And this has very drastic implications, without the high stress caused by the crumbling LR, maybe Vux never steps down and Mori and him become a great GM duo. It's really hard to say what would happen, but I think without Eph leaving, we'd have a very different Philly today.