As the Sixers navigate through a four-game week, the temperature around the team seems to have cooled a bit. They’ve lost four of their last seven following a 5-1 start. Joel Embiid hasn’t played in over a week, Paul George made his season debut but is out Wednesday, Kelly Oubre Jr. is now dealing with an LCL injury, Adem Bona will miss time with an ankle sprain and Jared McCain had to go down to Delaware to get up to speed. While injuries and the Sixers seem to go together like bread and butter, this is not an unforeseen situation by any stretch of the imagination.
Practically everyone entered the season with limited expectations for George and Embiid given how much time both players missed last season. We knew that McCain would need some time to ramp back up, even if we didn’t expect a G League stint to be part of that process. That leaves just the Oubre and Bona injuries as ailments to mostly durable players that come as a bit of a surprise. So given this context, is it really this damning for Nick Nurse that Tyrese Maxey leads the NBA in minutes per game at 40.3 and VJ Edgecombe’s 37.3 minutes per game are tops amongst rookies?
None of this is to say that the obvious concerns surrounding Maxey and Edgecombe playing this much this early in an 82-game season are illegitimate. Nurse is fully aware of the physical taxing he’s putting on his two guards and acknowledged it before Monday’s game against the Clippers.
”It does pile up a bit when those guys are expected to do the bulk of the scoring,” Nurse said. “I met with both those guys yesterday and I said, ‘You guys OK?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘You playing too many minutes?’ ‘No.’ ‘You sure? You looking for some help?’ ‘No.’”
While it seems like Maxey and Edgecombe are taking things in stride, that doesn’t mean they’re not being asked to do a ton. The season isn’t even one quarter of the way complete yet and it feels like the Sixers are relying on high-wire acts from one or both of their guards on a nightly basis to pull games out. How sustainable is that game script to winning basketball? Perhaps this is why it’s best to watch this season play out with minimal expectations to begin with because in order to contend, Philadelphia has to thread multiple needles.
To go with the aforementioned fatigue that could arise for Maxey and Edgecombe later in the season, Philly must get enough healthy and strong performances out of Embiid and George, which we all know is just crossing fingers at this point. Nurse and his staff must also find the right rotation pieces to work with Maxey and Edgecombe when Embiid and George are out to ensure that the two guards are not having to do all of the scoring in those games. Even if all of this goes right, you’re probably still just looking at a playoff seed somewhere in the 3-6 range.
As we progress closer to the holidays, it’s important to remember where the Sixers were at this time one year ago. Philadelphia started its season 3-14 and for all intents and purposes, that was the season. Some fans tried to talk themselves into a push for the play-in tournament at various portions of the middle months of the season, but the hole was always going to be too deep to dig out of given the inconsistent availability of the star players. Here we are again with those same star players still on the roster and still sitting out for lots of games, and Nurse is simply trying to avoid digging a hole that’s too deep to get out of this year as well.
Therefore, there’s really not an “I told you so” to be had if Philly is to lose in the play-in tournament or first round of the playoffs and Maxey and Edgecombe don’t perform up to expectations. Just getting to that point would almost certainly be a product of the high-end seasons that the two guards would have had. The reality of the Sixers’ 2025-26 season is that those two guards need to be great on a nightly basis for them to win and they need to be able to shoulder that load all the way to the spring. Certainly, there could be respites in the near future as George and McCain continue to inch closer to regular minutes. You could probably see some lineups with just one of Maxey or Edgecombe on the floor, coupled with McCain, Quentin Grimes, George and Embiid on certain nights.
But the mere mention of Grimes in a 30+ minute per night role probably gives some Sixers fans agita. Grimes was playing all those minutes last year because there wasn’t anyone else to take them. Justin Edwards has seen his minutes slashed in half from 26 per night in 2024-25 to 13 per night early this season. There’s a reason for that. We all watched the misery of last season play out and a lot of it included Grimes and Edwards being forced into roles they weren’t good enough to play. In Edwards’ case, it wasn’t even fair to an undrafted rookie and if Philadelphia wants to develop Edwards into a long-term rotation player, the best chance of doing that would be to minimize his role this year and allow him to grow one game at a time.
After a season as disastrous as last year was, particularly relative to the expectations for the team, Nurse is probably in survival mode at this point and who can blame him? Simply put, if Philly were to clone 2024-25 in 2025-26, it’s highly unlikely that Nurse is the coach in 2026-27. So that brings us back to the difficult predicament Nurse and his staff find themselves in. We all saw what last season looked like without Edgecombe in the NBA, having to rely on Maxey a ton and piecing a fringe NBA rotation together — both on nights Maxey was and was not available. If this season is going to be different in a big way, Maxey probably needs to be in MVP consideration and Edgecombe will need to win Rookie of the Year. That would give Philly an ample level of high-end performances on a regular basis to allow McCain to find his way back on his own pace and to live with the nightly wild cards that Embiid and George have become.
As McCain ramps up, Nurse could try to get Grimes and Edwards more time on the court in hopes of spelling Maxey and Edgecombe. He would also be crossing his fingers just like we’re doing that Embiid and George can be All-Star caliber players on nights Maxey and Edgecombe’s minutes plummeted. It shouldn’t shock anyone that in order to win at a high level in the NBA, you need star players to perform like stars over and over again and Maxey and Edgecombe are the best bets to do that repeatedly during the regular season for the Sixers. They’ll ride those two guys until they literally can’t ride them anymore and it’s probably their only path to contention this season.
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