As always, Tuesday mornings mean Sixers mailbags.
Let's not waste any time before diving into your questions for the week:
*From @womp-womp.bsky.social:*Assuming one of Paul George or Joel Embiid is on the floor, lineup you’re most excited to watch?
If the framing of your question is specific that one of Embiid and George is on the floor and the other is not, I am definitely more intrigued to see what the Embiid-centric lineups look in 2025-26.
From the makeup and significance of Embiid's role to the number of minutes he plays and the teammates he shares the floor with most often, there is a whole lot to unpack in terms of how Sixers head coach Nick Nurse tries to maximize his best player without running him into the ground.
Aside from Embiid's ongoing uncertainty, the most interesting subplot of this Sixers season to me will be the usage of Sixers guards.
Tyrese Maxey, Jared McCain and restricted free agent Quentin Grimes would be three of the five best players on this team; Maxey, McCain and VJ Edgecombe are the three most important long-term pieces of the organization. Three-guard lineups becoming a staple of Nurse's rotation would make a whole lot of sense, maximizing the number of minutes he can hand to those four players.
In order for Nurse to use such small lineups with regularity, though, they must prove to be viable defensively. That could be a daunting task, particularly when Maxey and McCain share the backcourt. Grimes and Edgecombe both have good size at shooting guard, though Grimes probably has a better chance of guarding up on the wing consistently next season.
Maxey and McCain, however, are both clearly best as their team's smallest defender. Playing them together could be a challenge, and the difficulty of surviving defensively increases if the small forward in that lineup is undersized, too.
But the Sixers need to give their guards – Maxey and McCain especially – every chance to coexist. The Sixers need to know as much as they can about which players fit together before they make any long-term roster decisions – and the offensive upside of those units is off the charts.
One idea – if George is not on the floor – is to play Trendon Watford at the four, not only providing some much-needed size but also some unorthodox ball-handling. Watford is a point forward of sorts at 6-foot-9, and his ability to initiate offense at his size will enable the Sixers to utilize their guards off the ball more often. McCain's skill set caters to that role incredibly well, and it is the sort of variety Maxey – a close friend of Watford's from childhood – desperately needs on his offensive menu.
From two standpoints – pure basketball fascination and important data collection – this is the most exciting non-George lineup I can think of:
PG SG SF PF C
Tyrese Maxey Jared McCain Quentin Grimes Trendon Watford Joel Embiid
Edgecombe could easily replace Grimes in this unit, but when the Sixers play three guards together next year I expect Grimes to be the tallest of the trio more often than not.
*From @mcilvadk.bsky.social:*What is the basketball equivalent of a 4 HR game? 75 points?
When Kyle Schwarber launched his fourth home run of the Phillies' win on Thursday night – a laser off the facing of the second deck – he became just the 21st hitter in major-league history to accomplish the feat. It was a legendary display of power in a season full of them.
It is hard to make an exact comparison between baseball and basketball here, but I settled on 70 points as the equivalent of a four-homer game. That has only been done 15 times in NBA history – and only nine times by players not named Wilt Chamberlain. All of the 70-point games in NBA history:
Player Points
Wilt Chamberlain 100
Kobe Bryant 81
Wilt Chamberlain 78
Wilt Chamberlain 73
Wilt Chamberlain 73
David Thompson 73
Luka Dončić 73
Wilt Chamberlain 72
Damian Lillard 71
Donovan Mitchell 71
David Robinson 71
Elgin Baylor 71
Wilt Chamberlain 70
Joel Embiid 70
Devin Booker 70
Embiid's 70-point masterclass against the San Antonio Spurs in January of 2024 was the greatest individual basketball performance I have ever seen in person:
What I find more charming about the idea of a four-homer game than a 70-point game is that there can be more diversity in terms of the player pulling it off. Every player to record 70 points in an NBA game has been among the league's elite scorers at the time. The four-homer list includes renowned sluggers like Schwarber and Mike Schmidt, but it also has players like Scooter Gennett and Mike Cameron.
MORE: Schwarber's 4-homer night, by the numbers
*From @kevincarragher.bsky.social:*If it's clear after next season that they have to move on from Joel and PG, what does that path look like? Is it even possible?
Unfortunately for the Sixers, this is not as simple as the organization deciding at some point that it is out of the Embiid and George business, washing its hands of a bad situation and moving forward with its young nucleus. Neither player's contract is desirable. In fact, given the enormity of the deals the Sixers handed to Embiid and George last summer, and the punitive nature of the NBA's new salary cap rules, they might now be the two most burdensome financial commitments in the entire league.
Embiid is owed over $55 million next season with raises in each of the following three seasons. George is owed $51.6 million in 2025-26 and will make even more in the next two campaigns. Even as the salary cap continues to increase, those are massive deals that only select teams can absorb.
After next season, odds are trading George will be a more realistic path than moving Embiid. The nine-time All-Star will only have two years left on his deal at that point – the second of those seasons contains a player option – and it would almost certainly cost the Sixers something of value to move him. But if a team believes George is a serious rotation upgrade capable of helping it over the top, would they exchange other bad money for him? The Sixers' best chance at getting out of the last two years of his deal would probably be taking back a pair of unwanted salaries that are not as damaging to a cap sheet as George's money would be, even if there is no basketball-centric benefit.
Trading Embiid, with three years left on a contract extension worth close to $200 million, might border on impossible. That is especially true if Embiid once again looks incapable of playing on a consistent basis at any level next season. It would likely cost the Sixers such a valuable collection of assets that they would be better off waiting on the deal to expire.
MORE: VJ Edgecombe talks with PhillyVoice before throwing first pitch at CBP
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