PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers are profiling as a 16-win team.
That’s the minimum number of postseason victories it takes to win an NBA championship. The Sixers are the kind of team that excels in the playoffs because of top-end talent, and because there is enough talent to thwart defensive schemes that can take away your first and second option offensively. Philadelphia’s duo of Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid is top-notch. Paul George and VJ Edgecombe are more than capable secondary scorers and playmakers. And the Sixers have the athletes and shooting to play and possibly be successful.
The problem is that the Sixers must get to the playoffs and those potential 16 wins. They need to navigate the 82-game grind of the regular season. They need to secure enough wins to ensure a good seed, and they must remain healthy while doing so. With Thursday’s 128-122 win over the Houston Rockets in overtime, Philadelphia earned its 24th victory of the season. It’s one that can eliminate some demons, considering the Sixers won 24 games all of last season.
“That’s awesome,” coach Nick Nurse said when told of this statistic. “I hope we can get one more.”
The Sixers are getting through the regular season as best they can. But that isn’t without its warts or adversity.
There’s been Maxey, who admitted early in the week that he’s fatigued from all the minutes he’s been playing during the year (he leads the NBA, playing 39.5 minutes per game). But, hey, Maxey scored 36 points and handed out 10 assists against Houston, so maybe he’s just a mutant.
There has been a prolonged homestand in which the Sixers have struggled. In that sense, beating the Rockets has to count as one of the best and most important wins of the season. And this is especially so after losing three of the first four on the homestand.
And there was a change in the starting lineup, where Kelly Oubre entered and Dominick Barlow came off the bench. It put Philadelphia’s best five players on the floor together: Oubre, Maxey, Edgecombe, George and Embiid, who can all dribble, shoot and pass. It was the first time this season that the Sixers started that group, and before Thursday, they had played a mere four possessions together on the season.
What this Sixers team has to do is navigate a regular season that’s becoming increasingly difficult in terms of schedule strength, and do so while remaining healthy in the long term. That part isn’t easy. Yes, they are in the fifth spot in the Eastern Conference, but the struggles at home have come for a reason. The teams they have been playing against are good, talented and capable. And before Thursday, the Sixers hadn’t played all that well on either end of the floor. A jump in competition means that a jump in your own play and execution is necessary.
“We have to keep building, and we have to keep getting better,” George said. “The goal is for us to get to the end of the season and to be healthy. We also want to be in a position to have some success.”
A schedule that was light at the beginning of the season has turned more unforgiving. A five-game West Coast trip looms, one that features both Los Angeles teams and a hot Phoenix Suns team. Then, the All-Star break, and then, a busy and challenging March schedule.
One piece of good news is that Embiid is playing better as time passes.
He scored 32 points, grabbed 15 rebounds and handed out 10 assists in 46 minutes against Houston. It was his first triple-double of the season, and it was his season high in rebounds. He talked about Jan. 22 being a special day for him — that’s the date of his 70-point game two years ago — and quipped that he and his wife might try for another kid and attempt to time it for Jan. 22. After the win, Embiid made a beeline to the locker room, saw his minutes and looked at Maxey.
“I should never play more minutes than Tyrese Maxey,” Embiid said.
When Embiid is joking and trolling, you know he’s feeling well. When he’s rebounding the basketball, you know he’s feeling well. And when he’s protecting the paint, that’s another sign that he’s feeling well.
As Thursday showed, Philadelphia is capable of playing good basketball when all of its players are available and healthy. That’s why, if the Sixers are healthy once the playoffs roll around, they are a team that bears watching. They are capable of playing different styles. When their collective offense is rolling, it can be difficult to stop. Almost as importantly, the trio of Edgecombe, George and Oubre is stingy and versatile defensively.
Embiid knows that. He knows the goal for the franchise is to have everyone on hand once the playoffs start. And it’s become fascinating watching the Sixers navigate that road while trying to keep their standing in the East’s top six.
“I think it can be tough, because we have the most back-to-backs in the league with 16,” Embiid said. “With all the back-to-backs, I haven’t been playing both ends, so it can be hard to have continuity, and it can be hard for the lineup to get a rhythm. But we just have to keep going and keep getting better. We just have to keep playing.”
Maxey’s 36 against Houston came at an opportune time, as he had been slumping. The burden he’s been carrying is among the heaviest in the league. When Embiid and George have been out, he’s been the one who has had to make up the slack. Teams have gotten wind of this. Several have put bigger defenders on him and shaded help his way.
It’s different for Maxey when Embiid plays. They share the offensive responsibility. They run a two-man pick-and-roll game that has few peers around the league. But Maxey is also among the league leaders in offensive usage. There was going to be a point at which he felt fatigued. That was a guarantee.
Thursday’s performance was encouraging; Maxey didn’t shoot the ball well in the first half but stayed aggressive, particularly going to the basket. He fought through the fatigue. He ended up making a significant impact on both ends, the kind the Sixers are going to need when those 16 wins are on the line this spring.
“We have to help him,” Nurse said. “We’d like to try and eventually get to a place where we play him a few less minutes per night. We are trying to get him a few minutes of extra rest. He’s had to deal with a lot. When it’s just him by himself, he has to do a lot of the scoring and playmaking, and he’s playing every night. We just have to figure out ways that we can support him.”
