Another week of Sixers basketball is underway, and this is the first one in 2025-26 that will include Paul George.
George – whose left knee surgery recovery has kept him off the floor for the first dozen games of the season – is questionable to make his season debut on Monday night when the Sixers play host to the Los Angeles Clippers. After the Clippers bungled negotiations with the nine-time All Star, George opted to depart his hometown team and join the Sixers. George was open about the extra juice he felt heading into the Intuit Dome last year; the cold reception given to him by Clippers fans over a year ago will surely be on his mind on Monday.
The Sixers are 7-5 but have already left multiple wins on the table due to some glaring weaknesses in terms of personnel and execution. They are looking to regain some of their early season momentum, and with Kelly Oubre Jr. added to a lengthy injury report it will be a boon for the Sixers to have George taken off that list of players sidelined.
In this week's 5 Sixers thoughts, some cursory expectations for George's return to action and a handful of observations elsewhere:
What to expect in Paul George's return
George is going to start in his return on Monday and for the remainder of the season. That much should not be disputed. The interesting question now, though, is at what position will he start? All along, the expectation has been that George would play much more power forward this year, and that he was the team's likely starter at the four.
That would have been true on any night up until Monday, when Kelly Oubre Jr. will miss his first game of the season due to a left knee injury he suffered at the end of the first half during the Sixers' loss to the Detroit Pistons on Friday night. Now, the Sixers are suddenly desperate for wing production, and George figures to be the central figure of that picture for the time being. With a handful of interesting options at the four, Sixers head coach Nick Nurse could opt to try to give George a stint or two at that spot but predominantly use him as a wing. It would ease what would otherwise be an enormous burden on the surging Justin Edwards and keep the healthy competition for minutes at the four going.
MORE: Who is in and who is out for Sixers vs. Clippers?
How much the Sixers can ask of George, of course, also remains unclear: It seems safe to assume he will be on a minutes restriction; how strict will it be if so? How much offensive creation can the Sixers ask for from George as soon as Monday? They are suffering from their lack of playmaking depth of late; the absences of George and a mobile Jared McCain have forced VJ Edgecombe and Quentin Grimes into oversized ball-handling roles.
George certainly should help ease their workloads there eventually, but how quickly can the Sixers ask him to help in that regard? Will George ever be able to serve as a primary scorer for a second unit lineup, let alone right off the bat? Will Nurse bank on him being one when so many of his one-on-one scoring chances last season looked like this?
George has been a full participant in Sixers practices for over a month, so it is not as if he is going into this without any preparation. But NBA games have a different speed and physicality that a player cannot truly prepare for, and the fact that the opponents will be wearing Clippers jerseys can only add emotions to the equation for George. Exactly what his offensive role looks like from the outset will be quite interesting.
VJ Edgecombe changes the pace
Edgecombe is currently mired in the first slump of his NBA career, but he is completely unbothered. Edgecombe's unwavering self-belief makes it easy for him to flush disappointing performances as they are happening. On many occasions already, Edgecombe has had poor shooting games and then knocked down a crucial late-game three-point shot.
"At the end of the day, it's basketball. If I'm open, I'm going to shoot the ball," Edgecombe said. "I don't care. I promise you: I don't care how much I miss. If I'm open, I'm going to shoot the ball because it's the right shot. We might not get a better shot after that."
Even in his most challenging moments and stretches – and this six-game period in which the No. 3 overall pick has shot just 30.3 percent from the field certainly qualifies as that – Edgecombe's poise has impressed the people around him.
Another impressive aspect of Edgecombe's season: his willingness to change speeds as a half-court scorer. Edgecombe has considerably more athletic gifts than just about any opponent he faces. He enjoyed a historically great start. It would be easy to understand if he tried to rely on his otherworldly tools, but he instead has shown an appreciation for the art of slowing down:
"I'm just trying to read the floor, to be honest," Edgecombe said. "Not all the time [do] I just have to run to the paint and just try to throw up a shot or something. So I'm just trying to learn a little more with my pace and everything in the paint, try not to get so sped up. It's a building process for me, just trying to continue getting better at it."
Asked what about Edgecombe's current slump has stood out to him, Nurse actually mentioned Edgecombe's ambitious transition dunk attempts that have largely not been fruitful so far. Just as it would have been understandable for Edgecombe to play with his foot on the gas on all times in the half-court, it is easy to see why he keeps trying to throw down monstrous poster slams.
"We've just got to continue to work on his overall finishing in transition," Nurse said. "He's a bit home run or strikeout: He's going to fly down, soar in there really easy – layup looks really good, dunk it or something – or he doesn't, he tries to dunk it from a little too far away or something. So just continuing to work on that, that is certainly something you can work on, a skill you can improve fairly quickly."
Does Nick Nurse have his solution for third quarters?
Asked about the Sixers' constant struggles in third quarters last week – it is one of the only topics Nurse has been asked about more this season than the next topic – Nurse finally hinted at a potential change. He brought up his previous success using different lineups at the starts of each halves, a ploy that famously worked for the 2018-2019 Toronto Raptors team that knocked off the Sixers en route to a championship.
When Oubre went down on Friday, Nurse was going to be forced to replace the veteran swingman, and did so with Quentin Grimes. But he also replaced starting power forward Trendon Watford with Dominick Barlow, the starter at the four on opening night and the following game who missed nine games after that.Barlow came off the bench in his return but ended up playing considerably more than Watford. In the third quarter in particular, Barlow helped power a tremendous Sixers run before they collapsed in the final frame.
Barlow could be a candidate to start over Watford if Oubre's injury indeed motivates Nurse to slide George down to the starting small forward spot. Or one of Barlow and Watford could open the game and the other could open the second half. Is Nurse thinking about regularly switching his starting unit at halftime?
"I don't know," Sixers head coach Nick Nurse said. "I think we've got a lot of moving pieces right now."
MORE: McCain makes progress with Delaware Blue Coats: 'I'm getting there'
Andre Drummond shocking home fans and road fans alike
All season long, Drummond has been shooting corner threes and confidently asserting that it is a reliable component of his game. Sixers head coach Nick Nurse has fielded consistent questions about whether it is something he really wants the veteran center doing routinely. Nurse has been nearly as adamant as Drummond himself: The Sixers believe Drummond can and should be shooting corner threes, and he has connected on six triples to pay off that confidence.
"It's something that I've added to my game," Drummond said during the preseason. "I think now it's just the confidence piece that I have now, which is why I'm shooting them more frequently now. Just having the confidence of my coaching staff and my teammates to know that I'm going to hit that shot, it's all the more reason to shoot."
Asked once again about Drummond's foray into the world of long-range shooting on Sunday, Nurse said he believes Drummond should be right around two three-point attempts per game. If Drummond continues to make a decent percentage of those shots, it is an easy decision to embrace him occasionally floating out to the corner and getting a shot off near the end of the shot clock. But Drummond's single greatest offensive utility is his ability to revive possessions on the boards. What is the right balance for Drummond between spacing to the corners and crashing the glass?
"Probably about the way it's playing out right now," Nurse said. "I think he's balancing it just fine. I think he should probably take a couple a game. He's now comfortable, he's now making them."
Nurse did have one complaint about Drummond's three-point shooting. He is tired of the palpable incredulity, at home and on the road, that ensues when Drummond sets his feet to fire away.
"Hopefully we'll get over this huge gasp in the crowd every time he starts to line one up," Nurse said. "I think we're getting over that point – like now, I'm expecting them to go in. I don't know about you guys, but now when he's open and he lines one up – even on the road, for whatever reason, they were gasping that he was going to take a three. But I think we're doing okay."
Where does the rest of the center depth chart stand?
With Joel Embiid out for at least another game, Drummond is going to be even more important moving forward, as struggling reserve center Adem Bona will miss at least three contests with a right ankle sprain. Drummond takes a massive amount of pride in his conditioning and overall fitness level, and the work he put in on those fronts over the summer has allowed him to play very long, uninterrupted stretches and log heavy minutes. For at least one more game, he will need to do that to an even greater degree.
Beyond Drummond and the injured Embiid and Bona, what are Nurse's options at center? The most obvious is rookie center Johni Broome, whose limited NBA minutes to date have come in garbage time. Nurse has said in the past that he has hoped to find ways to get Broome into regular action, and acknowledged on Sunday that Broome is a stronger possibility to see the floor on Monday, though he was not exactly emphatic about it.
"Maybe, yeah," Nurse said. "We'll look at it."
Nurse figures to rely on more than one person to back up Drummond, and the leader in the clubhouse might actually be a pair of players. Two-way forwards Barlow and Jabari Walker are both power forwards by trade, but Nurse has expressed or proven a willingness to slide either one to center. Barlow closed the Sixers' opening night win at the five and spent some time there in the fourth quarter on Friday despite Nurse preferring how he fits as a four. Nurse has been more openly optimistic about Walker's ability to serve in a small-ball five role, indicating confidence in that look on a few different occasions.
At some point, though, Nurse and the Sixers should try to get a good look at how Broome can fare against NBA competition in at least medium-leverage minutes. Monday's game feels like as good of an opportunity as any.
MORE:Two years after first meeting, Broome lands with Sixers
Follow Adam on Twitter: @SixersAdam
Follow PhillyVoice on Twitter: @thephillyvoice