If you look around the NBA, it’s easy to see teams like the Washington Wizards, Charlotte Hornets, and Brooklyn Nets constantly moving toward the bottom of the league, as they’ve just not been able to get things right as organizations.
When you look at the Sixers, especially over the past few years with Joel Embiid showing a level of play that’s been extraordinary, you wouldn’t think of them in the same class as the other bottom feeders of the league. They have not won a championship in over 40 years and despite the splashy off-season, they may be further from a title than any time over the past few years.
Yet, they continue to sell hope.
Sixers title window
With Embiid starting his level of dominance, realistically, during the 2021/22 season, the Sixers looked like a team on the rise with a player who would be a perennial MVP candidate and easily one of the most dominating players in the league over the next few years. While Embiid has shown that dominance when he’s on the floor, the issue is that Embiid won’t always be on the floor. He seems to be as cursed as someone can be on the basketball court.
If you look back at his injury history, it’s truly a sad tale. Starting with a broken foot and surgery that caused him to miss two whole seasons, to meniscus injuries, broken fingers, thumb surgery, and three different facial fractures that weren’t the result of negligence or anything other than pure bad luck. Joel Embiid just can’t seem to stay healthy or catch a break. Yet, there’s hope.
Sixers’ President Daryl Morey spoke after the trade deadline, once again offering hope not only in the team’s moves at the deadline but in Joel’s future.
“We’re optimistic long-term. Talking to the doctors and our understanding from talking with multiple experts — I think we’re at seven, eight, nine, 10 at this point — of the top people in the world, all see this as one that over time will improve, but it’s happened slower than anyone’s anticipated. We love how Joel’s fighting
Morey continued,
“I think the [term] ‘left knee injury management’ is almost perfect. In fact, there’s been a lot of discussion, even the league office is very focused on stars like what he should be listed at. And that is the right term… It should improve over time. In fact, it’s anticipated to improve over time. That’s been slower than we thought. We do think there will be a place in the future where the symptoms in that are reduced or go to zero, but we’re still in the middle of that where we have to manage it, and it’s going to be based on symptoms.”
The hope is that Embiid will be able to remain healthy enough to play the majority of the team’s games while maintaining that health through extended playoff runs. The team is hoping that, even just for one season, one of the best players in the league, and easily one of the top to even wear a Sixers uniform, will be able to be there for the team when they need him most and play at the top of his game. It’s just proven to not be the case, and it’s destroying the window the team has to win an NBA Championship.
Yet, there’s hope.
Missed shots
We’re not talking about the shots on the court; we’re looking at the ones off the court. While the Sixers have had a dominant player in Embiid for several years now, they’ve truly failed to put the right team around him in order to get to the next level. They have missed on pretty much everyone that they’ve brought in.
Looking through the list of names, and for whatever reason, they’re not in Philadelphia anymore, you can see why the team took their shot, and you can see clearly how they missed. Jimmy Butler, James Harden, Tobias Harris, Ben Simmons, Markelle Fultz, Buddy Hield, Robert Covington, TJ McConnell, Shake Milton, Mike Scott, Matisse Thybulle, Josh Richardson, Al Horford, Seth Curry, Dwight Howard, Danny Green, DeAndre Jordan, PJ Tucker, Caleb Martin. There’s a list of quite a few names that were misses.
While the players named above may have had some success with the team, there were just too many issues surrounding them. Some, like Fultz and Simmons, either forgot how to play or lost the heart to even be a player on the team. Some, like Jordan and Howard, were just too old and well past any usefulness on the court. Others, like Covington, Thybulle, Green, and Milton, seemed like they played well, served a role well, and could be part of a team that could win. For whatever reason, none of them are here, and none of them worked out with the Sixers in terms of helping them reach their ultimate goal.
This isn’t the fault of those players, at least not for the most part, but it’s more a problem with the management of the team. Elton Brand was given the GM’s role after the Colangelo mess and the NBA’s removal of Sam Hinkie. He had one year of experience as the GM of the Blue Coats, and that was it.
Was he ready to be the GM of a franchise that needed to make moves to win a title? It doesn’t seem so. They made a huge trade for Jimmy Butler and then allowed the duo of Ben Simmons and Brett Brown to convince him that Butler wasn’t the guy and that Tobias Harris should be re-signed. We’ve all seen how that’s played out.
With the arrival of Daryl Morey, the team was thought to be on a new path and that meant that there would be some cleaning of the house and more than likely, as it rumors began swirling immediately, the arrival of superstar James Harden. While that did happen, everyone saw how it ended. Harden was here, became disenfranchised and was moved to the Clippers. He made sure to burn all of his bridges on the way out the door.
But, here are the Sixers, ten years into the career of Embiid and five years into him being one of the most dominant in the league, and they’re no closer, if not even further from a title than they were a few years ago. Poor decisions, poor planning, and a bit of bad luck have put the team in this position, and that comes from the top. If you don’t put the right people in place to lead the team, then the results will never be right. (As some may argue, the team hasn’t had good results because they’ve not sniffed a title or even a conference championship.)
Yet, there’s hope.
What does the future hold
Tyrese Maxey, despite the ideals of his coach at the time, forced himself to be a star player in the league. If the coach, Doc Rivers, would have had his way, Maxey would have ridden the bench behind Shake Milton and Ben Simmons, proving again why Rivers is not the coach that people say he is, but that’s a story for another time. Maxey is a star and young. He’s talented, and this season, he’s started showing some of the leadership qualities that a team would like in their superstars.
Then, with an oft-inured Embiid, the Sixers took the star route and signed Paul George, the oft-injured forward formerly of the Clippers, Thunder, and Pacers. While the signing was cheered by the fans, management, and NBA, the results have not been there.
George experienced a knee injury in his first preseason game and then aggravated it at the start of the season. He’s been shooting worse this season than at any time over the past several years, missed time with injury, and has been a more expensive placeholder than the person who was dogged for years in the spot he now occupies. While George can get it together and could help, if history has shown us anything, it’s that he will not suddenly become a much better player over the course of his mid-thirties.
In addition to George and Maxey, who both signed max contracts during the off-season, the Sixers decided that Embiid, who hasn’t played a full season in his career, was good to sign a three-year extension as soon as he was eligible. If you’re trying to build a championship team, having very limited draft picks, hitting (seemingly) on two of them by accident, and then signing older, injury-prone players to max contracts doesn’t seem to be the way to go.
In the 2025-26 season, the salary cap for the league is expected to be around $154.6 million, and the Sixers have $144.9 million rapped up in three players, two of whom can’t be counted on to play the bulk of the games. Is there room for quality players to fill out the rosters? With the exceptions and veteran minimums, sure, the team could field a full roster, as they have this year, but it won’t be anything of substance.
The constant rotation of players that are of the quality of years gone by Gordon, Lowry and Reggie Jackson will have to be the norm. Players like Guerschon Yabusele and Kelly Oubre Jr. will have to seek out better contracts after showing what they’re able to do on the court. They can’t be counted on for taking discounts and sharing managements hope that all of the stars will align.
The Sixers will have limited space and assets to build a quality roster. The team needs to take a good, hard look inward and see what exactly it can achieve over the next few years. $60 million per year for a guy who won’t play 50 games per year combined with $55 million per year for another who will be 35 years old before the end of the current season isn’t the best way to build the franchise for continued success.
The options the team will face are to trade Embiid and/or George for some viable assets or keep running the same type of squad for the next few years. Do they try to move Maxey, whose talent and not ridiculous salary would be welcomed by almost any franchise around the league, in hopes that the return would be able to get the team a title in the next season or two? Too many questions, yet they’re the same questions they’ve faced in the past. What they’ve not done is answer them at all correctly.
Yet, they sell you the hope of tomorrow.
