Through the first two-plus weeks of the 2025-26 NBA season, here are the current leaders in minutes per game:
Tyrese Maxey (PHI): 41.3 MPG
VJ Edgecombe (PHI): 38.6 MPG
Austin Reaves (LAL): 37.9 MPG
Kelly Oubre Jr. (PHI), 37.4 MPG
Lauri Markkanen (UTA): 37.1 MPG
This isn’t an aberration for a Nick Nurse-led team, either.
In 2019-20, Kyle Lowry was fourth in the league in minutes per game (36.2), Fred VanVleet was eighth (35.7) and Pascal Siakam was 12th (36.2). In 2020-21, VanVleet was second (36.5) and Siakam was sixth (35.8). In 2021-22, Siakam and VanVleet were tied for the league lead at 37.9, while Scottie Barnes was tied for eighth at 35.4. And in 2022-23, Nurse’s final year in Toronto, Siakam led the league at 37.4, VanVleet was fifth at 36.7 and OG Anunoby was 16th at 35.6.
Once Jared McCain gets back up to speed and Paul George makes his season debut, Maxey and Edgecombe’s minutes figure to tick down accordingly. After all, Nurse emphasized at media day how the Sixers “should be able to keep energy up with some shorter stints just because of the sheer numbers” in their new-look backcourt.
Then again, it’s fairly clear that three-guard lineups will be a staple for the Sixers this year. Nurse is a believer in getting the best players on the floor, positions be damned, and four of the Sixers’ seven best players are all guards. They’d be doing themselves a disservice by playing McCain and Quentin Grimes sparingly behind Maxey and Edgecombe.
The Sixers need to find a healthy balance between leaning on their backcourt and preserving their key guys throughout the grind of the 82-game regular season. The debacle that was their 2024-25 campaign should be fresh in their minds, after all.
With both George and Joel Embiid sidelined at the start of last season, Maxey averaged 41.0 minutes per game across his first six outings. In the seventh game of the year, he suffered a hamstring strain that sidelined him for two weeks. By the time he returned, the Sixers were in a 2-11 hole that they’d never climb their way out of.
Maxey was sensational over those first six games last year, averaging 30.2 points, 4.3 assists, 3.5 three-pointers, 3.3 rebounds and 1.5 steals, although he shot only 40.8 percent overall and 29.6 percent from deep. He has leveled up this season with a league-best 33.5 points, 8.5 assists, 5.1 rebounds and 4.3 made threes while shooting 47.8 percent overall and 47.9 percent from distance.
Edgecombe, Oubre and Grimes are also off to strong starts this season, but the Sixers’ house of cards would be at major risk of crumbling if Maxey got injured. You’d never know that by how Nurse handled the fourth quarter of the loss to Cleveland on Wednesday.
The short-handed Sixers were only down three at halftime, but Maxey sputtered in the third quarter, finishing with only five points on 2-of-8 shooting. Edgecombe replaced him with three minutes left in the third quarter, but Maxey was right back on the floor at the start of the fourth even though the Sixers were down 107-87. The Sixers only got within single digits with 1:21 remaining in the game, but Maxey stayed in for the first 11 minutes of the fourth quarter regardless. This was the second night of a road back-to-back in which Maxey played 39 minutes the previous night against the Chicago Bulls, too.
Maxey’s workload is setting off the biggest alarm bells, but Edgecombe’s is a close second. While Edgecombe has been an absolute revelation early in the year, he’s also playing the most minutes of any rookie since Michael Jordan, according to Liberty Ballers’ TrillBroDude. At this rate, he might hit the rookie wall by early December.
The Sixers have another back-to-back Saturday against the Raptors and Sunday against the Detroit Pistons, although they have a two-day gap between their games against the Boston Celtics (Nov. 11), Pistons (Nov. 14) and Los Angeles Clippers (Nov. 17). That should give the gassed-out Sixers some well-deserved rest after a brutal early-season schedule.
They just need to make it to those games in one piece. Nurse’s current minutes distribution won’t help them with that goal.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats viaNBA.com,PBPStats,Cleaning the Glass orBasketball Reference. All salary information viaSalary Swish and salary-cap information viaRealGM.
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