Twitter account @DidTheSixersWin retires after a decade of documenting the team’s fortunes

After 10 seasons of recounting the result of each Philadelphia 76ers game, fan favorite account @DidTheSixersWin is shutting down.

“I’ve tweeted Yes or No following every Sixers game for the past 10 years … but running this account and making silly Sixers videos has been a big part of my twenties. I’m definitely going to miss it,” account creator and Ridley Park native Kevin Taddei posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Oct. 27, the day after the Sixers fell to the Milwaukee Bucks in their season opener.

Taddei, 31, started the account during his senior year at Rutgers University in 2014 as part of a digital media class project on the history of tanking — when teams intentionally perform poorly to secure better draft picks — in the NBA. The account found fame during the Sam Hinkie era, Taddei recalled, when the Sixers would go on to lose a historic 26 games in a row.

The tanking didn’t work out too well for the Sixers, who only netted a superstar in Joel Embiid and zero championships, but it did work out for Taddei. The account would go on to amass more than 95,000 followers, help Taddei break into documentary film editing, and become a place for fans to commiserate over losses (or trade drama, or anything related to Ben Simmons).

@DidTheSixersWin came to represent both the beauty and futility of The Process. And now that grand plan is over — at least according to a couple of Taddei’s followers.

“I feel soulless and like a rudderless desolate ghost ship lost at sea,” wrote one X user about the account’s ending, while others joked about crying or likened it to “the death of a friend.”

“It honestly started out as a joke and a way to make fun of the Sixers for never doing enough to actually win, and it just snowballed from there,” Taddei said.

Taddei is shutting down the account for a couple of reasons: He wants to be more present for his 4-month old daughter Eliana, who he hopes will see the Sixers get past the Eastern Conference semifinals by the time she turns five. He also wants to stop being so demoralized by a team he’s loved since he was a kid who thought he had a chance at becoming the next Allen Iverson.

“Every year since 2021 I was just dragging myself, almost unwillingly, into watching the team. It felt like the definition of insanity to watch the same thing happen over and over again, with these losses in the second round,” said Taddei, who is still mad at the Sixers for last season’s game 7 loss to the Boston Celtics.

The Inquirer chatted with Taddei about the James Harden trade deal, his favorite moments from a decade of fandom, and what — if anything — would get him to come back.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

At this point, it was our only choice. After the playoffs last year, I think the fanbase and Harden were almost done with each other. I think for him to be able to get us a couple of role players and a couple of first-round picks makes the best of a crappy situation.

I’m just excited for Tyrese Maxey to have a much larger role and for that whole situation to just be behind us.

» READ MORE: How Sixers learned of James Harden trade and what they’re doing to move forward: ‘I almost didn’t believe it’

The account was from a fan!

Instead of being happy all the time and making the best of every crushing loss — and there’s been a lot over the years — I just tweeted what was on my mind, even if it was just, ‘God, that was horrible.’ After all, I would experience the same second-round losses as everyone else, so there was no point in sugar-coating things.

On the other side, whenever there was a great win, I would be ecstatic, and I’d celebrate.

It was 2018 and I had just made a Star Wars-themed video to help Joel Embiid promote his All-Star Team candidacy. Embiid actually retweeted it. That meant he saw it, which made the whole moment feel cooler and more intense than it already was.

When I first graduated college in 2014, I actually applied to work for the Sixers social media team. I didn’t get this job, and looking back on it, that was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

But once @DidTheSixersWin got popular, the actual official Sixers Twitter account really distanced themselves from me — they never interacted with anything I put out, they never responded to anything I sent them. It felt like a coordinated effort to not interact with me … so I never got free tickets to a game or anything when I ran the account.

But after I retired the page, someone from the team reached out and sent my family tickets to the Suns-Sixers game on Saturday.

I would say the only way I could see myself coming back is if the Sixers went on a run in the playoffs and actually made it past the second round. And if they went to the finals, I would even do hype videos again. But I’m not coming back just for regular season games.

You have to have tough skin and roll with the punches. There are a lot of ups and a lot of downs, and over the last 30 years, there’s been a lot more crushing downs for the Sixers — like I’ve seen the Sixers advance to NBA finals once in my lifetime and that was 22 years ago.

To be a Sixers fan is to deal with a lot of soul-sucking blows so you have to be resilient. Trust me, this team will try to break you. It’s broken me a few times.

Our record is going to be something like 51-31, and Maxey will be an All Star. We’ll be a No. 3 seed going into the playoffs, but we’ll lose in the second round to the Celtics. It will be crushing.