Despite every move the Philadelphia 76ers make, the basketball gods seem to have a countermove ready to go. Unfortunately, it appears the Sixers are in Zugzwang.
Yes, Zugzwang is a real word. It’s a chess term originating from Germany that translates to “compulsion to move.” Being in Zugzwang means that you are at a disadvantage by virtue of having to make your next move. That next move may not end the game outright, but the reality that you will be checkmated becomes inevitable.
With the most recent injury news regarding Joel Embiid, it appears that his left knee is going to continue to ail him for the rest of his career. The benefit of the doubt from the fanbase is waning by the day, and as the losses continue to pile up with or without him on the floor, more and more people are going to be looking toward the next era of Sixers’ basketball. The organization can do what it wants to continue to try and duct tape a sinking ship, but the Process Era is out of effective moves.
The Sixers have spent the better part of the last decade squeezing every possible drop of juice out of Joel Embiid’s best years as a basketball player. Every single one of those seasons ended without truly knowing what could have been if Joel Embiid had been healthy or the situation surrounding him had been ideal heading into the playoffs.
Then, whether it be organizational shortcomings such as driving stars out of town or making ill-timed and ill-fitting personnel decisions that handicapped the roster, the Sixers could not help but constantly find themselves backed into corners that were going to be incredibly difficult to work their way out of. Honestly, it is pretty impressive they were able to improvise for as long as they did.
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The Sixers were fortunate enough to draft Joel Embiid with the third overall pick. Had he never injured his foot prior to the 2014 NBA Draft, he would have been the projected top overall selection. He did not see the floor for his first two full seasons as a contracted professional. In his effective rookie season, he only played 31 games, while his supposed-to-be co-star, former top overall pick Ben Simmons, also missed his entire rookie year with a foot injury.
Embiid and Simmons finally got to play together come 2017. And after trading with the Celtics to attain their second consecutive top selection in the draft, the Sixers’ core of the future was finally going to be set. They drafted Markelle Fultz, who promptly developed Thoracic Outlet Syndrome and missed the vast majority of his rookie year—and when he played, he was largely ineffective.
They still made the playoffs as the third seed in the Eastern Conference but got dispatched in the Eastern Semifinals in five games by the Boston Celtics sans Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward. Who the Celtics were not missing, however, are the two guys the Sixers could have and should have drafted with their consecutive top selections in 2016 and 2017—Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. (The Celtics would not have traded the top pick to the Sixers in 2017 if they knew the Sixers were taking Tatum, but there was also not a handshake agreement between the two teams that the Sixers would not draft Tatum.)
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The summer of 2018 saw then-general manager Bryan Colangelo relieved of his duties after the five fake social media accounts, used as vehicles to disparage his own team’s players, were discovered. The same Bryan Colangelo that was forced upon the Sixers by the NBA in order to combat the years of tanking under previous general manager Sam Hinkie. The same Sam Hinkie that at least had a vision to acquire the players Colangelo then proceeded to bash behind their back.
Later that month, with head coach Brett Brown acting as chief decision-maker, the Sixers drafted the hometown Villanova star Mikal Bridges, whose mother worked for the team at the time. Within the hour, Bridges was traded across the country to Phoenix for Zhaire Smith, who would go on to play just 13 games for Philadelphia due to an allergic reaction that nearly took his life. Thankfully, Smith is alive and well and is attempting to work his way back through the G League.
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Then came the Jimmy Butler fiasco. Newly appointed general manager Elton Brand started off his tenure with a bang by trading for Jimmy Butler. A couple of months later, he traded for Tobias Harris and signaled to the NBA world that the Sixers were all in on competing for an NBA Championship.
Fast forward to the Eastern Semifinals against the Raptors, and Joel Embiid was not fully healthy. The ball had to be taken out of Ben Simmons’ hands late in games. Kawhi Leonard was on an all-time special playoff warpath. And the series still went the distance and took a miracle four-bounce, heartbreaking buzzer-beater to put the Sixers down.
That off-season was the major inflection point of the Process Era. Instead of opting to extend Jimmy Butler, they catered to the fragile ego of their homegrown player, Ben Simmons. They extended Tobias Harris on a max deal and signed Al Horford to a $109 million deal over four years.
That 2019-20 season was a disaster from the start. Al Horford looked completely checked out and washed up (even more ironic now that he has played very good basketball and won a championship with Boston in the years since). There was not enough shooting and spacing around Simmons for him to be at his most effective. Then the league was shut down in March due to the global pandemic.
The Sixers picked up in the NBA Bubble, where they were promptly swept in the first round by the Boston Celtics. The one playoff series in Joel Embiid’s career where he can claim to have been fully healthy, and Ben Simmons missed the entire series. To make matters worse, Jimmy Butler ended up playing in the NBA Finals in his first season with the Miami Heat- dispatching the Celtics to get there.
Zugzwang.
But wait… so much more has happened in the four years since then. How was this the point of inevitable checkmate? The thing about Zugzwang is if your opponent makes the wrong ensuing move, you may just be lucky enough to extend the game. The Sixers needed two mistakes.
The first was by Mike Muscala, whose game-winning shot in a meaningless game in the Bubble put the Sixers in a better draft position.
The second mistake was made by Tilman Fertitta, owner of the Houston Rockets, a few days after the conclusion of the NBA Bubble. Fertitta let longtime general manager Daryl Morey depart the franchise and become president of basketball operations for the 76ers just a few weeks later, just in time for the very delayed 2020 NBA Draft.
The hiring of Morey, coupled with the Muscala Miracle, allowed the Sixers to draft Tyrese Maxey with the twenty-first overall pick. Maxey represents one of the two beacons of hope for the future (we will get to the other one) that allow this concept to merely be about the Process Era and not the entire Sixers organization.
But, of course, it is only a matter of time before the board starts closing in again.
Under new head coach Doc Rivers, and in a shortened regular season due to the time constraints of the previous season’s end, the Sixers earned the top overall seed in the East. In their most embarrassing loss of the Process Era, even with Embiid battling a partially torn meniscus, the Sixers bounced on their home court in seven games to the Atlanta Hawks in the Conference Semifinals.
Ben Simmons passed up a late dunk opportunity over Trae Young—who is a foot smaller than him—that would have tied the game. Instead, he gave the ball off to the worst free-throw shooter on the team other than himself. Matisse Thybulle would only hit one at the line, and the game and series were history. The Hawks have not won a playoff series since. And as luck would have it, just like the loss to the Raptors two years earlier, the Conference Finals would have had the Milwaukee Bucks waiting for them, not the vaunted Celtics.
Doc Rivers and Joel Embiid both had the chance to defend Simmons after the game and both failed to do so. Ben Simmons asked to be traded and would never play another game in a Sixers uniform.
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It was not all lost, though. Tyrese Maxey began to ascend in his second year in the league. The vibes surrounding the team were generally good without Ben Simmons in the building. Then at the trade deadline, Simmons was finally offloaded to the Brooklyn Nets in return for Daryl Morey’s career kingmaker, James Harden.
Having Harden as a set-up man to run pick-and-roll with Joel Embiid was impossible to stop. Maxey developed into one of the best shooters off–the–catch in the league, playing off-ball next to Harden. Embiid was healthy heading into the playoffs. Is it possible the Sixers defied the odds and could eventually come out on top? Nope!
Joel Embiid suffered an orbital bone fracture in their first-round series-clinching win against the Raptors. The game was decided, and the Sixers were moving on. For whatever reason, Embiid was still on the court and took an inadvertent elbow from Pascal Siakam. The playoff run was as good as dead from there, with the Sixers losing to the Miami Heat in the next round and Embiid clearly hampered after his return.
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But finally, some stability! Harden committed to another year with the Sixers, assuming that his relationship with Morey would be enough to get him paid the following summer. Harden did everything he could to elevate the top-end capabilities of the roster.
His personal connection with Maxey continued to grow, as did his chemistry with Embiid. Largely due to the advantageous positions Harden was able to put Embiid in on offense, Embiid won an MVP. They had not been set up this well since Jimmy Butler was on the team. But what can go wrong will go wrong with this franchise?
Joel Embiid sprained his LCL in his knee in the first round of the playoffs against the Brooklyn Nets. He returned in Game 2 of the Eastern Semifinals against the very familiar Celtics. James Harden put on a masterclass on the road in Game 1 to steal a win without Embiid. The Sixers would lose Embiid’s return in Game 2 and his MVP coronation in Game 3. Harden would again single-handedly win them Game 4 at home to tie it up. They then won Game 5 in Boston to go up 3-2, setting up for their biggest game since Allen Iverson was on the team.
At home for Game 6, the Sixers mounted a spirited second-half comeback to take a slight lead late in the fourth quarter, then proceeded to not be able to hit water if they were shooting off a boat. Jayson Tatum, who had been having one of the worst games of his career, came alive late to seal the win for the Celtics. The Sixers did not even bother showing up for Game 7 on Mother’s Day. Season over.
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In the offseason, Daryl Morey opted not to give James Harden the money he had sacrificed for the betterment of the team the summer before. With Morey and Harden having been tied at the hip for over a decade, things got pretty messy, culminating in Harden having “Daryl Morey is a liar” written on a marquee at a party. Another Daryl Morey favorite, PJ Tucker, who was also still employed by the Sixers at the time, was at the party, too. Harden also broadcasted his feelings about Morey at one of his off-season camps.
Harden (and Tucker) was traded to the Clippers early into the 2023-24 regular season. The third star the Sixers had in the building ran out of town in a five-year span.
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Somehow, someway, the Sixers still found ways to make people believe. Under new head coach Nick Nurse, the offense opened up for Joel Embiid more than ever before. Utilizing Embiid’s playmaking ability from the nail, Nurse unlocked a dimension to Embiid’s game that many people did not know he had. Embiid was playing the best basketball of his career en route to what would have been his second straight MVP award.
Then Jonathan Kuminga fell on his knee in January and tore his meniscus again. Embiid did all he could to get himself to playable condition come playoff time, but there was no overcoming how compromised he truly was. Not only was he fighting the injury, but he also developed a case of Bell’s Palsy. He still managed a 50-point game against the New York Knicks in the first round just to showcase how talented he truly is. The Sixers would end up losing to the Knicks in six games.
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The Sixers had one final chance to get it right. They waited until the summer of 2024 to extend Tyrese Maxey so the team could open up as much money as possible to sign the nine-time All-Star Paul George away from the Clippers. (Would be interesting to know what his conversations with James Harden were like regarding that.)
The Sixers seemingly made smart moves around the George acquisition to fill out the rest of the roster. The team was finally going to have a core that could organically grow together for years to come. It all came crashing down just as quickly as it was built.
Paul George hyperextended his knee in the preseason, causing him to miss time to open the season. For the millionth time, the Sixers were misleading in their messaging regarding Joel Embiid’s health, and he, too, missed time to open the season.
Embiid then pushed Philly Inquirer columnist Marcus Hayes in the locker room and earned himself a three-game suspension. And Tyrese Maxey pulled his hamstring. And Paul George hyperextended the same knee just a month after originally doing so. All in all, the Sixers’ trio of superstars have played 21 minutes with each other and the team owns the second-worst record in the NBA. They have spent more than quadruple the time in an air-it-out team meeting than they have playing basketball together.
The silver linings would be that the George and Maxey injuries were not considered serious and they had time to make up ground in a weak Eastern Conference. The Sixers’ optimists still had something to hold onto.
Then November 22 happened. In a 3-hour span leading up to a game against the Nets, Joel Embiid was slated to warm up to see if he could play, then did not come out for warm-ups, was ruled out for the game, and was ruled out for the following game taking place two days later. That is when the reality set in that his knee may just never be right again, and the writing is on the wall for this iteration of the team. A season and future that had so much positive anticipation in July might not even make it until its first Christmas.
Zugzwang.
With Joel Embiid just having signed a max extension of his own to go along with George’s and Maxey’s, the Sixers left themselves some resources to make another move. If they were to do so thinking they can still unlock another level to this team, they would only be further delaying the inevitable. It may not be for another presidential term that the Sixers can transition to their next era, but admitting the current one is finished is the first step. The Process Era as we know it is done. Game over.
The reason the Sixers as a whole are not in full-fledged Zugzwang is due to how they have set themselves up for the immediate future following the Embiid and George contracts. Just like he did with Tyrese Maxey, Daryl Morey struck gold with the 16th pick in the 2024 Draft by selecting Jared McCain. By the time McCain is signing his rookie-scale extension, Maxey will be entering his prime and should be in line to sign his first super-max. The Sixers’ backcourt for the next decade is in place, and that will stretch far beyond Embiid’s and George’s contributions to the team.
For all of the self-inflicted miscues that the Process Era has brought, the Sixers were able to benefit from the miscues of others along the way to be able to imagine a successful world after Joel Embiid is gone. But while he is still here, it is best to not get fooled again. Any move with the idea of extending the Process Era in mind will be a detriment to the franchise. Zugzwang!
