Just because the Sixers appear on their way to winning the NBA’s second tank war for the fifth slot in the lottery standings doesn’t mean they ever had serious intentions to lose games.
Coming off their 12th consecutive loss on Monday night in Miami, the Sixers are still mathematically alive for the fourth-best odds at the first overall pick in this summer’s NBA Draft. A New Orleans win in Brooklyn on Tuesday night would keep that pulse alive in the season’s final week for the lottery teams. However, Philly still has a game against Washington followed by a pair of home games against two teams locked into the East’s play-in tournament so a 15-game losing streak to end the season might not be in the cards for the Sixers. That’s what it’s going to take if you’re holding out hope they can catch the Pelicans.
But for the better part of the last 3-4 months, the Sixers have been involved in the NBA’s second tanking war if you will. Utah, Washington, Charlotte and New Orleans were battling for the league’s three worst records, spots that come with equal lottery odds at the top pick. Then it was the Sixers, Brooklyn, Toronto and, for a while, Chicago. One of these teams was going to somehow end up in the play-in tournament with how atrocious the East was this season and that team ended up being the Bulls.
It seems likely that the Sixers will end 2024-25 with the fifth-best lottery odds and will out tank their Atlantic division foes. While Philadelphia drew the strongest ire from Adam Silver regarding tanking during The Process, this season’s abundance of losses was far different. Everyone knows how high expectations were when the season started. A 3-14 start proved to be impossible to overcome, but it did not stop the Sixers from trying to win games and resuscitate their season.
For months, we continued to get updates on the statuses of Joel Embiid and Paul George until both were shut down in Feburary and March. Tyrese Maxey was wearing a splint on his injured finger even when the season was lost. It was only until last week that Maxey’s season was reportedly deemed to be over.
As the losses piled up, Philly shifted its focus from attempting to squeeze its way into the play-in tournament to prioritizing minutes for younger players. The Sixers acquired Quentin Grimes at the trade deadline and continue to play him about 35 minutes a night. In other words, Grimes wasn’t acquired to help the Sixers lose games, he was acquired to potentially be a part of future Sixers rosters. That’s looking likely given how well he has played since being traded.
Justin Edwards had been playing about 35 minutes a night as well prior to suffering a rib injury on Saturday night against Minnesota. Edwards has also been one of Philadelphia’s few silver linings in a dismal season. But he too was not seeing his role reduced in an effort to boost the team’s lottery odds.
It’s these kinds of things that should be brought up if anyone questions Philadelphia’s motivation in the second half of 2024-25 with the top-six protected first-round pick in this year’s draft hanging over the franchise. Toronto “rested” players like Immanuel Quickley and Jakob Poeltl regularly. The Raptors have also pulled some of their better players in close games down the stretch in hopes they lost the game.
Brooklyn GM Sean Marks infamously said this back in January:
“We’re going to have to be systematic with some of the decisions we make,” Marks told the New York Post. “And they may not always be in line with winning the next game or putting the most talent out there.”
Utah’s “injury report” was longer than a Harry Potter book when the Jazz came to Philadelphia one month ago.
The lines are always going to be blurry on if these other lottery teams were truly making decisions to lose games. But there are enough questionable dots to connect for you to at least draw some of your own conclusions. But none of those dots are courtesy of the Sixers. Philadelphia just had a terrible season. Embiid and George were hurt for the entire year. Maxey got hurt late in the year and Jared McCain was lost for the year early in the season.
Through it all, the Sixers made efforts to get younger, knowing they might not have their first-round pick in the upcoming draft. They seem to have managed to lose enough games to make retaining that first-round pick the expected outcome in next month’s lottery. It’s possible that a narrative sparks up about Philly trying to lose on purpose in the season’s final three games to lock up the five seed in the lottery standings officially. But, unlike The Process, if Silver is frustrated about tanking across the NBA, he can take his frustrations elsewhere.