A lot has already been said about the 76ers. That isn't unusual. They tend to be one of the more talked-about teams in the NBA, just usually for all the wrong reasons. Inevitably, something tragic or comic (or both) happens, and everyone shakes their heads, has a good laugh and then waits for the next time they trip themselves up and faceplant, which often doesn't take very long.
The run-up this time has been different. The Sixers are about to begin one of their most anticipated seasons in recent memory. For the first time in a long time, there is promise. In the NBA's annual general manager survey, the Sixers received the most votes for having the best offseason. They received the second-most votes to win a vastly improved and much deeper Eastern Conference, trailing only the Knicks, the defending champions. And they were the only team other than the Spurs, Thunder and Knicks to receive a vote to win it all.
That says quite a bit about the expectations surrounding this team. So do their championship odds, tied with the Knicks (+1000 at FanDuel) and behind only the Thunder (+240) and Spurs (+270). That's the sort of elite company Philly is expected to keep after signing arguably the greatest player ever in LeBron James, and trading for Jaylen Brown coming off the best regular season of his career.
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But of all the things that have been said so far about this year's version of a previously star-crossed franchise now simply laden with stars, Joel Embiid's take on the situation was perhaps the most telling. The oft-injured Sixers center has seen some stuff in his 10 NBA seasons, very little of it good, a lot of it ranging from frustrating to deeply disappointing. Technically, he's been in the league for 12 years, but he completely missed the first two seasons due to injury. That's obviously become something of a theme. Over the last three seasons, the former MVP has missed 150 games. Embiid's rash of health issues tends to pop up at the worst times, particularly around the playoffs. He's had a fractured orbital bone (twice), torn meniscus (twice), torn thumb ligament, and a bout with Bell's Palsy. Prior to last postseason, he looked to be in pretty good shape -- then his appendix quit on him and he needed emergency surgery. The man could use a break from his body.
Put all that together, and the opportunity for him to make a dent in the playoffs has been limited. He returned from the appendectomy to help the Sixers to a dramatic and unexpected first-round upset over the Celtics. The significance of that can't be overstated. No two teams have faced each other in the postseason as often as Boston and Philly. The Celtics usually beat the Sixers' heads in. This time, the Sixers won the series for the first time since 1982. It was a feel-good moment in Philly -- but it didn't last long, as the Knicks flattened them in the second round. It seems like some team or another is always giving the Sixers a proper bashing in the playoffs.
Embiid would know. He's never won more than a single series in any postseason. The closest he came was back in 2019. The Sixers had one of their best teams of the "Process" era that season. It featured Embiid, Jimmy Butler, JJ Redick (before he left for TV and eventually the Lakers head coaching gig) and prime Ben Simmons, to the extent that he had a prime, before everything went south on his game and he and the franchise went through a messy divorce. It was a good squad. They ran into the Raptors in the second round that year. The series went to Game 7, culminating in Kawhi Leonard's historic four-bounce miracle at the buzzer. That changed everything for the Raptors, who went on to win it all. It changed nothing for the Sixers, who didn't.
I was in the building that night. The ball bounced long enough on the rim that I had the time to tell the reporter next to me that it looked like the game was going to overtime. Then it didn't. The Raptors moved on and the Sixers went home like always. While Toronto celebrated, Embiid wept.
Unkind critics and online tough guys gave Embiid heat for that, but in the moment, I found it to be not just a raw, human reaction but also emblematic of how the Sixers fanbase felt as a whole. As a native Philadelphian, I've seen countless Sixers defeats. That ranks as one of the most soul-crushing, even by the standards of a team that is used to getting its heart ripped out.
In retrospect, Embiid's response to the loss also foreshadowed the agony still to come. They were close in that series. Had they won it, maybe it could have been their year. Except they didn't, and it hasn't been the Sixers year in so long that it's almost hard to remember all the way back to the last time it was.
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Embiid, now 32, has been through a lot in his Sixers tenure. His new teammates might not fully appreciate just how much. Brown is a former Finals MVP and LeBron James is LeBron James. They've won it all. Embiid hasn't come close. When he was asked about everything he's been through and about the upcoming season, his reply was telling.
"I'm at the point in my career," Embiid said, "where I need to win. Between everything that's happened, that would be a good ending for the city of Philadelphia. And they deserve it."
That would be a happy ending for everyone involved, which isn't really something the Sixers are known for. That's not exclusive to Embiid or the current era. The organization hasn't made it out of the second round in 25 years. The last time they pulled it off, Allen Iverson dragged them to the Finals. That was 2001. Iverson just turned 51 if you can believe it.
The Sixers haven't won a championship since 1983 -- so long ago that it's easy to doubt if they ever will again. While the NBA was conducting that GM survey, I did some informal temperature taking of my own with people around Philly. A pair of long-time basketball writers and friends came to roughly the same conclusion and predicted the Sixers would win somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 games, then get bounced in the second round of the playoffs. Another pal was less optimistic. When I asked if there was any chance the Sixers could avoid their usual nonsense and turn in a drama-free season, he didn't have to consider the possibility at all. He just immediately laughed and shook his head. He didn't need to elaborate. A few hours later, the Sixers — always desperate for a backup center to fill the many minutes when Embiid is inevitably unavailable to play — lost Ariel Hukporti for the season with an Achilles tear. The universe has a weird way of chiming in when it comes to the Sixers.
Losing Hukporti obviously isn't ideal. For now, the Sixers will reportedly go with some combination of Adem Bona, Jabari Walker, Dominic Barlow and small-ball LeBron to back up Embiid. (And maybe a pinch of Tacko Fall, whom they signed to a two-way contract over the weekend.) There are obvious concerns there, but as Sixers-related calamities go, that's relatively minor. In fact, the usual nonsense and drama that forever surrounds the franchise have been fairly minimal in advance of the season, which does not mean they've been entirely absent.
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There's been a lot of talk about James and his helicopter. People have taken videos of it leaving the practice facility and local news outlets have tracked the flights. Tyrese Maxey has joked about it. Pablo Torre, who won a Pulitzer for his investigation of the Clippers cap circumvention scheme, is now looking into James' relationship with Fanatics, which provides the helicopter for the NBA's all-time scoring leader. Carmelo Anthony came to James' defense about all that -- even though it's hardly surprising that Torre is sniffing around after former Sixers minority owner Michael Rubin, the founder and CEO of Fanatics, said so many damning quiet parts out loud.
Beyond that, there's been chatter about James commuting from New York and how he thought about going to the Knicks in free agency before ultimately signing with the Sixers. That kind of thing usually wouldn't go over well with the locals, but they're willing to give him a long runway considering he did something that almost never happens by picking Philly in the first place. There was a story about Embiid being tardy to practice, only for James to air him out -- something that was quickly denied by Embiid, James, and coach Nick Nurse, and then walked back by the original source.
And there have been the expected questions about whose team this is and how so many big-name, high-usage players are going to share one ball. Wondering about that was to be expected. Maxey is coming off the best season of his career. So is Brown. VJ Edgecombe had an excellent rookie campaign. Embiid is a former MVP. LeBron is LeBron.
But to hear them tell it, asking who's the main man is reductive. Embiid insisted that no sacrifice is necessary and no one has to take a backseat. And when Brown asked who the "alpha" is, he dismissed the notion with a curt "next question."
As Brown put it, "it doesn't have to be anybody's team."
Those are nice sentiments as far as team camaraderie goes, and they might even believe it. Of course, it's easier to believe before a single game has been played and any adversity has been faced. It should also be noted that Brown probably isn't the best messenger there, considering he and the Celtics had a pretty messy public separation this summer after spending his entire career in Boston dogged by questions of whether the team was his or Jayson Tatum's.
But if Brown and Embiid's worst indiscretions here are optimism about all this working out, they have good company. James came to town and immediately made his plans plain, promising everyone that "I didn't leave my family to lose in the second round." James has also said all the right things about fitting in with his new teammates and playing whatever role Nurse might have for him. James said he'll do "whatever they need me to do," which he figured shouldn't be difficult since "the luxury of my game is I can do everything…literally I can do everything."
An all-time quote. The man rightly does not lack confidence.
In addition to Nurse throwing James' name out as a small-ball center option, he's also mentioned running the offense through him. Nurse called James a "great offensive creator" and "table setter" and added that "if it isn't him bringing it up and starting [the possession], it's probably going to be first pass anyway to [him on] the wing."
That kind of thing provides easy fodder for skeptics of this whole experiment who wonder what trickle-down effect James will have on his teammates. How might James being the table setter impact Maxey, who made his first All-NBA team last year? Will it free up Maxey or dull his glow? How will the delicate ecosystem accommodate Edgecombe? Or Brown for that matter? How many games will the Sixers squeeze out of Embiid? How many minutes can they reasonably expect James to play when he's about to embark on his record-setting 24th season and turn 42 years old in December?
There are plenty of questions to go around, but the only good answer leads back to what Embiid said about his career and the franchise: this team has to win without delay. Anything short of a conference finals appearance will be a disaster, and even that might not qualify as a success.
Forecasts on how the Sixers will weather the season vary wildly. In the aforementioned NBA GM survey, the Sixers also got the most votes for being the toughest team to predict. That certainly tracks. As a friend and former coworker recently wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the season could be great or it could blow up. That seems about right. But it's worth pointing out that everything going sideways on them is generally expected. Even considering the possibility that they might be genuine contenders is rare. When it comes to the Sixers, that's not nothing, but they still have a lot of ground to cover before it approaches reality.
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