A month into the season and with a 23% winning percentage, the Sixers offer little to nothing to get excited about.
To say this first month of the Sixers season was a nightmare would be to actually give it a compliment. Injuries, severe underperformances, and terrible coaching have combined in an amalgamation of suck that has led the team to a pitiful 3-13. While many had felt that the Embiid Era might have already come to a close, a summer that landed the Sixers Paul George resulted in there being tepid excitement heading into this year, but clearly, that has been extinguished.
Sixers Struggle is an Understatement
Things turned from gold to garbage before the season even started. George hyperextended his knee in a preseason game, a Sixers’ tradition unlike any other. Then he managed to do it again and is on the shelf again. He has only managed to play in half the team’s games. Maxey also has missed 6 games nursing a hamstring injury. The big, and maybe least surprising injury stems from Embiid who is still nursing knee problems that are somehow lingering on from last season. He has only been available for 4 games so far and with how vague and unclear the Sixers keep injuries it is unclear just how healthy he will be all season. With it being guaranteed that he is not playing back-to-backs that is at least another 11 games he will miss. That leaves only 58 more games Embiid could play in, assuming he plays in all of them which is super unlikely. Even then, Embiid has looked lethargic and uninterested. Starting slow is not uncommon for him, but it seems a bit more glaring than normal this year. Probably because the team didn’t take his side after Marcus Hayes wrote a disgusting hit piece about him and info leaked from a team meeting. Way to go Josh Harris. Eric Gordon has also faced the ailment of being 36 in the modern NBA and the expectation that he would have a substantial role is actively hurting the team.
Luckily the Sixers have an innovative and smart coach to maximize their inefficiencies, right? Eh, not so much. Nick Nurse has been absolutely abysmal. He has certainly been dealt a terrible hand to start the season, but the lineup decisions and lack of any true plan have been glaring. Regardless of circumstances, you cannot be 3-13 as a team that has the players the Sixers do and not have the coach take his fair share of blame. He feels out of ideas and depleted. Nurse was a solid coach for the team last year and for the most part, it felt that he was getting the most of what he has. The energy has completely shifted. So much so that some people are calling for his job, something that will be a realistic possibility if this trend continues, especially if the results don’t change when the guys get healthy.
Sixers Hope
To not end on a negative there have been some positive aspects to the team. Jared McCain has looked incredible so far and the idea of Maxey and McCain growing into an all-star tandem here is truly exciting. Maxey had already grown into a star and McCain appears to be, at the bare minimum, a high-level shooting contributor with his 40% 3-point percentage. Ultimately the NBA is a league in which you can be a .500 team just by showing up each game with semi-talented basketball players and being prepared. The Sixers when healthy have substantially more than that. They have 2 Hall of Famers (Embiid, PG), an all-star (Maxey), a former NBA championship-winning coach (Nurse), a budding young stud (McCain), and a cast of mismatched, but competent bench players. If, and it is becoming an increasingly large ‘if’, this squad gets on the court, they are a contender, but at the moment they more resemble a catastrophe… But hey, I bet Cooper Flagg would look really good in a Sixers jersey.
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