‘It can’t rain forever’: Georges Niang’s Inquirer diary takes fans inside the Sixers’ slow start

Welcome to the first edition of Georges Niang’s 2022-23 Sixers diary. Throughout the season, the reserve forward will exclusively share first-person insights about his on-court and off-court life during what has already become an interesting season.

In his first entry, Niang shares from Toronto what it’s been like to navigate the Sixers’ rough 1-4 start, and how he decompresses on road trips.

It’s a mental funk for everybody, because what happened the season before is basically history. Your successes — if you didn’t win a championship, even if you did win a championship — it goes to nothing. You have to start over. It’s like starting off a race. Last season, you jump in midway, you realize how far you’ve gotten in your race, how much growth you’ve had. But you don’t get to see your growth or what you’ve put in over the summer really work until the season starts. And sometimes it won’t happen the first four games. Sometimes it’ll actually click the seventh or 12th game.

But the fact of the matter is you’ve got to keep showing up. You’ve got to keep being consistent with your routine. Keep practicing. Obviously, nobody planned for us to start 0-3 and we did, but it made us look at all of ourselves in the mirror and realize what we had to do better and what we had to sacrifice as individuals to be better as a team.

I think we’re on the same page with all of that, and I think that’s huge for us that we had those early checks. Because you’d rather have it early on, where you’re not too far into your journey, then you start losing three, four, five in a row when you don’t have games on the back half to make up for it. Guys are still showing up with the same enthusiasm, the same excitement to become better. That’s what really gives me a good feeling.

We have savvy veterans who have been in the league for a while. We’re going to keep doing it until we do it right. That’s the upside of it. Obviously, losing now hurts, but you’ve got to grow through what you go through. If you’re spotting the Raptors 35 points in the first quarter, it’s going to be an uphill battle all night. And they lost to us in the playoffs, so it’s going to be a dog fight. You definitely felt it from those guys.

» READ MORE: Overreaction or appropriate panic? Assessing story lines from the Sixers’ disappointing start

We’ve been focusing on our defense and what we want our identity to be. And then just continuing to be unselfish on the offensive end and share the ball and play at a fast pace. Obviously, we have great scorers on this team, and we’re finding ways to use them at the elite levels that they need to be used at. It’s all new, right? De’Anthony Melton is new. Danuel House is new. P.J. Tucker is new. So they’re coming from different systems, where they’re adapting to us and what we want, and that stuff takes time. You can’t just get that done in training camp. I think training camp was a great progression, a great step, but those things take time.

I think it’s getting to a point where you come in and you’re a new guy and you’re like, “OK, I fit in here. This is how I can impact the game.” You have those small victories, where it’s De’Anthony playing in transition or Danuel making open corner threes or P.J. getting in the lane and playmaking for others. You kind of find where you fit, and everybody kind of just falls in line. James Harden and Joel Embiid realize where guys fit, and Tobias Harris and Tyrese Maxey understand where guys fit, and then it all starts to kind of come together — like you’re building with clay, or something.

I try not to think too much about me. It’s just more what can I do to help the team, and that’s continue to make shots and defend multiple positions and, when I get a chance to playmake for others, get in the lane, drive and kick. That’s really what it’s going to come down to. I’m going to hang my hat on that and be the best me that I can be. I think that’s what’s best for the team.

I used to be a worrying worrier all the time, wondering what this person thought or who I’m trying to impress or “What am I trying to do here?” But the fact of the matter is, after a while, you know how to play basketball. I remember calling my old agent, who has been a mentor to me — he works in the NBA now — and he was like, “Stop worrying about what other people are thinking and stuff like that and play basketball.” Play like you’ve known how to play, and when you just free yourself of other people’s thoughts and are just going out there and controlling your attitude and your effort and how you treat other people.

Obviously, you need to have a sense of urgency with certain things. When we started off 0-3, it’s totally different. You’re like, “OK, we really have to get it going.” Then, you just let flow take over. When you’ve practiced so many hours at something and put in so much time, there’s no need to worry. Now, when I start to worry is when I know that I haven’t put the time in. That’s when I’m like, “Well, I’m not prepared for this.” And when you’re worrying about other things on this court, there are too many good athletes, good players for you to be thinking other than what the [expletive] is right in front of me. If you start thinking about other stuff, someone’s going past you, and the game just happened so fast and the next thing you know, you did seven bad things when you could have just left it at one but you compounded it into seven.

» READ MORE: ‘If we made it, they can do it’: Cameroonians Joel Embiid, Pascal Siakam, Christian Koloko make history

But as a team aspect, I don’t think you worry because I think we have so many talented guys in this locker room and so many guys that are willing to win. When you have guys like that that are willing to sacrifice their own to get championships and win games, I don’t ever come in second-guessing anything.

You’ve got to get out of your hotel room on road trips like this. You can’t stay there the whole time. You’ve got to be able to be free and be a human and have good balance, but you also have to be able to lock in. So I really take my time after shootarounds and after games to dedicate to what’s going to keep my mind right. I won’t let anything break that. I really try to stick to a routine, but give myself some “me” time to get away from the game and just think about nothing. I’ll take a walk by myself in Toronto. Put on my extra-thick jacket. Maybe go shopping. Just be a normal human for a little bit. I’ll have that time, and I’ll also have time that we need to spend figuring out what I can do and what we can do to become a better team.

When you’re on a losing streak, you remember that feeling from past seasons and you think about what you did to get out of it. It always sucks to remember what it felt like, but it can’t rain forever. We’re going to continue to keep working and make this right.

— Georges Niang, as told to Gina Mizell