Remaining games a test
With toughest schedule in NBA, can Philadelphia thrive?
One of the best things about the Eagles’ and Phillies’ playoff runs was not having to pay attention to the 76ers. Sometimes, the best therapy is a little distance. Not that we’re having problems. It’s just that, after six years together, things can start to feel a little stale. Don’t get me wrong. We still love each other. But a lot of times when we’re together, I close my eyes and pretend they are the Milwaukee Bucks.
Sorry, that got away from me. I was just trying to understand why people seem to be so down on this Sixers team. The Sixers’ resumé at the All-Star break is as strong as it has ever been. They’re currently playing at a 54-win pace, which would be their highest win total of the Joel Embiid era. Their winning percentage is virtually identical to 2020-21, when they were the top seed in the Eastern Conference and came within a meltdown against the Atlanta Hawks of making it to the conference finals. They are 13-3 in their last 16 games. Seven of those wins against teams who are at least four games over .500. According to Basketball-Reference.com’s projections, the only teams with better odds of winning this year’s NBA Finals are the Boston Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers, Denver Nuggets, and Memphis Grizzlies.
At the same time, a lot of people seem underwhelmed by these Sixers. It’s not just a local phenomenon, either. Look at Embiid. A year ago, he entered the All-Star break as the favorite to win MVP. Two years ago, he was right there, too. This year, he is scoring 2.5 more points per game than where he finished in 2021-22. He is on pace to finish the season with career highs in field goal percentage, free throw percentage, effective field goal percentage, and minutes per game. Yet in ESPN’s latest MVP straw poll, Embiid placed a distant third, garnering just one more first-place vote than Jayson Tatum and finishing closer to fifthplace Luka Dončić than first-place Nikola Jokić. For the first time in five years, he was not voted in as an All-Star Game starter.
Put simply, the public perception of these Sixers is that they are a team in stasis. The Bucks and Celtics are both on pace to finish with the most wins by an Eastern Conference team since Milwaukee won 60 and the Raptors won 58 in 2018-19. In the West, the Nuggets are on pace to finish with their highest win total in more than a decade. If Embiid is having the best season of his career, and he has more talent around him than he’s had in his career, what does it say that the Sixers are having the season they always have?
I’m not saying that I completely subscribe to that line of reasoning. But it is valid, and it speaks to the question that the Sixers need to answer over these next four or five months. Is a year-and-a-half really enough time for a team to become a team, let alone a championship team? One thing I’ve heard a lot of people say is that this Sixers team seems to be missing something, and that the thing that they are missing is the same thing they always seem to be missing. They just don’t look the part. You watch the Celtics, the Bucks, the Nuggets, and you think to yourself, “Man, they’re trouble. That’s a really good team.” You watch the Sixers, and you wonder when the fourth-quarter collapse is coming.
Really, it comes down to that word we keep on mentioning. Team. Tatum and Jaylen Brown have been playing together for six years. Jokić and Jamal Murray have been together for seven years. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton have been together for 10 years. Embiid and James Harden have been playing together for 13 months. Of the top 11 players in the Sixers’ rotation, only three predate the pandemic. The big question is whether a team that has reimagined itself every two seasons since Embiid’s rookie year can get to a point where it can compete on the same level as teams that steadily built themselves according to the same consistent blueprint.
We’re going to find out sooner rather than later. They have the toughest remaining schedule of any team in the NBA, with their opponents combining for a .540 winning percentage (the Clippers are second at .523). Starting Thursday, they play the Grizzlies, Celtics, Heat, Heat, Mavericks, and Bucks. That’s six games in 10 days against winning teams, including three against teams that are in first or second place in their conference, plus another two against a team that knocked them out of last year’s playoffs.