He leaves without the fanfare of a winner, but his arrival gave the Sixers something to build from.
Premature death is beautifully depressing. When you lose something before you're prepared for it to disappear, you cling to the best parts tight as you can, until eventually that's all you can remember holding. So it goes with breakups, failed ventures and the passing of our loved ones, different and the same all at once.
The last three years of discussion have centered so heavily on debate -- Prokafor vs. Nokafor, Trusting vs. Hating The Process -- that it seems surreal for the spine of it all to vanish into the night.