In a season that has gone as bad as 2024-25 has for the [Sixers](https://www.libertyballers.com), no one is infallible or above criticism. It takes just about everything to go wrong, and some bad luck, for a team with championship aspirations at the season’s onset to end up with — hopefully — one of the five worst records in the NBA. So now we’re at the point of the season where anything positive that happens on the court will be a negative in the eyes of most fans as the fifth, sixth and seventh slots in the lottery standings continue to be tight.
It should continue to be pointed out that the benefits of losing games will only be temporary for Philadelphia. Provided it retains its first-round pick in the top six of this summer’s draft, the Sixers will owe a 2026 first-rounder to Oklahoma City which will only be top-four protected. They will then owe a top-eight protected first in 2028 to Brooklyn. They’re going to have to figure something out as early as this coming offseason and do their best to field a competitive team next season. Perhaps in the coming weeks, a head will fall for this disastrous season. But it seems unlikely for that head to be Daryl Morey’s or Nick Nurse’s. If anything, there may be some token changes to the coaching staff or front office.
It’s also possible Nurse has built up a small amount of positive equity for himself heading into the offseason. The Sixers have won three games in March as we enter the final week of the third month on the calendar. That’s a number that may well grow to four or five in a week’s time with a slew of sub-.500 opponents on the horizon. They won just one game in February when they were still trying to salvage the seasons of both Joel Embiid and Paul George. Tyrese Maxey was also suiting up, albeit at what seemed like far less than 100% in February.
Not only have the Sixers won more games in March than they did in February, but the roster has undergone more change. While the trade deadline ushered in some younger players, the shut downs of Embiid and George felt like the long-awaited white flag being waved on the season from management. What followed was a series of 10-day contracts and more new faces brought in to be given opportunities for the rest of the season.
Who knows how many of the new players Philadelphia has signed in the last month will even be around for training camp come the fall? But it sure seems like the Sixers are a hungrier group as the season’s end nears. Any way you look at it, three wins in three weeks to start March still isn’t much. But even if you’ve only been scoreboard watching, you would have noticed an increasingly more competitive Sixers team in recent games.
There are a lot of candidates for what rock bottom was for 2024-25, but the Bulls loss at Wells Fargo Center at the end of February takes the cake for me. A bad Chicago team came to Philadelphia and beat the Sixers by 32 and led by as many as 50. It’s not as if there haven’t been lopsided losses in March — we saw one less than a week ago in Oklahoma City and another Sunday in Atlanta. But there have also been a lot of games the Sixers’ overall compete level seemed to be much higher in.
They had the lead practically the entire way in Houston against a Rockets team that might wind up being the two seed in the Western Conference playoffs. They trailed by 12 at halftime against San Antonio only to have a huge third quarter and lead by four entering the fourth. They led by as many as 16 in a game over a week ago against playoff-bound Indiana at home.
Are opposing teams guilty of taking the Sixers lightly knowing they’re grasping at straws just to have enough players these days? In a league like the NBA in which motivation on a nightly basis seems to come and go, that could be part of it. On the other side of the motivational coin, are the players wearing the Sixers uniform relishing the opportunity to prove they belong in the NBA? There’s likely some truth to that part of it as well. There have also been some hot shooting nights for Philly that can simply just be chalked up to the randomness of an 82-game season in which any team can have a good night from the three-point line.
But the coach has to at least get an ounce of credit for the spurts of good play that we’ve seen in the last three weeks. Ultimately, the Sixers are going to be inferior to most teams they face at this point in the season, especially if Tyrese Maxey remains sidelined. But it doesn’t appear as if they’re laying down. The Sixers play in March has sure lent credence to the idea that players and coaches do not care about tanking and the lottery odds. It’s Nurse’s job to get the players to play hard every night and that’s happening in March at a better rate than it did in February and the players currently dressing for the Sixers probably didn’t know each other one month ago. That’s a reflection of a coach that still cares about doing his job.