The Sixers do not play basketball for a week. That’s a good thing.
If you’re around my age, which is 30, the Sixers are the Philadelphia sports team you’ve seen have the least amount of success. The 2001 team was the first Philly sports team I truly loved, but the near quarter century that has followed has been a whole lot of pain and jokes made about the Sixers by other fanbases. The time in between Allen Iverson’s exit and The Process was a myriad of seasons stuck in NBA purgatory, and sadly the seasons ever since Sam Hinkie’s arrival have not resulted in anything significantly different despite countless changes to the front office after Hinkie and multiple coaching changes.
But when you think a little deeper about the last two decades of Sixers basketball, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a season more agonizing and tiresome than 2024-25. The Sixers entered this season with championship aspirations. An offseason overhaul from Daryl Morey resulted in the league’s top free agent last summer, Paul George, choosing to leave his hometown of Los Angeles and come across the country to Philadelphia. Caleb Martin had played a ton of playoff games with Miami and was viewed as a nice defensive addition and glue guy to a roster that needed to figure out how to win in the spring. Jared McCain made it to the Sixers’ pick outside of the lottery in last summer’s draft and at the very least was viewed as someone that could knock down some shots off the bench right away. Guerschon Yabusele had just won a second silver medal in the Olympics and was poised to return to the NBA after being let go by Boston in 2019, the team the Sixers and the rest of the NBA would have to conquer.
The offseason appeared to have the necessary ingredients to finally get the Sixers at least to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since 2001. There was a good blend of top-end additions, winning DNA, youth and high-upside short-term contracts to make you think this could all come together in a meaningful way and have the Sixers playing into June. Instead, the team fell flat on its face right out of the gate, starting 3-14. They have not recovered, and by now, I feel confident in saying they’re not going to. That’s one thing about the All-Star break that always got me. It’s commonplace for people to refer to the time after the break as the second half, and I understand why that happens, but there are only 28 games left now. It’s more like the final third.
The first two thirds of the season were not only rife with losses, but nonstop injury reports. Other than McCain, it felt like no one was ever ruled out for one significant stretch of time. Whenever Joel Embiid or George especially were sidelined, you knew it was likely an absence that would span multiple games, but the timeline remained ambiguous. It was always something the team would list as day-to-day, week-to-week or reevaluated in certain number of weeks. Their absences were multiple shorter absences rather than one longer period of inactivity.
This wasn’t limited to just Embiid and George too. Martin was in and out of the lineup as were several other veterans. The bottom line was, at around 5 p.m. on gameday you found out who was playing and who wasn’t playing. Those that cared enough would have no choice but to check the injury report again prior to the next game knowing it could have a ton of names on it or maybe for once it would be a lighter night of inactives. Unsurprisingly the Sixers used 33 different starting lineup combinations in the first 54 games of the season which led the NBA.
The more optimistic fan spent a good chunk of the season’s first three or four months holding out hope that maybe the team could catch a good break on the injury front and still become the formidable roster Morey envisioned. A school of thought seemed to emerge that the team would have to go through the likes of Cleveland and Boston at some point in the playoffs anyway so if they were to sneak in and play one of those teams in the first round, what difference would it make? Even as recently as the trade deadline Morey was telling fans to simply squint hard enough and they’d still be able to find a championship contender. I’m not sure how Morey feels today, but it sure feels like the “if they’re healthy…” contingent of the fanbase is shrinking. That’s because the Sixers entered the break losing games in embarrassing fashion against shorthanded opponents with Embiid, George and Maxey all on the floor. They’re now just 7-6 when all three play.
The tank train seems to be gaining passengers, but as someone who bought a ticket on said train a long time ago, I assure you this is not going to be a smooth ride. The majority of the losses in February have been by single digits, and some have had lots of lead changes. Even a 13-point loss to Detroit last week should have been by a much bigger margin but the Sixers made a rather pointless run in the second half to make that score look less embarrassing. My point is that even if you’re ready to throw in the towel on the season, they’re not about to start losing by significant margin to make that a simple venture. You’re going to be sweating out these games in fear of forfeiting a first-round pick in the back half of the top 10 and getting literally nothing out of this season.
It is quite possible that this season ends without a single silver lining. George looks washed. McCain winning the Rookie of the Year award would have been nice, but that’s long gone now. Martin never had the chance to change the culture of the locker room and is no longer a Sixer. Embiid might need another knee surgery. Maxey is seemingly dealing with his own knee injury now. Maybe they do end up with a half decent chance at retaining their first-round pick and the lottery is unforgiving. For as much as Yabusele seems to like Philadelphia, what if he leaves in free agency?
At least there were some moments during previous seasons in Embiid’s career that you could enjoy while they were happening even if the season ended in playoff disappointment. The illusion of hope existed. During The Process years, we all knew what was going on and no one in their right minds got their hopes up. Before that, the Sixers were a team trapped in the middle of the NBA and the team’s ceiling just wasn’t high enough even to tease its fans. But this season is one from hell. Everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. The final game of the season, which is hopefully the 82nd game of the regular season and there is no play-in tournament to keep this nonsense going on any longer than it needs to go, will be when we can finally exhale. But for now, let’s enjoy the mental breather that is the All-Star break.