Barely one week into the 2026-27 NBA season, a handful of teams are dealing with season-altering injuries.
Thunder wing Jalen Williams (fibula/ankle) and guard Cason Wallace (shoulder) may already be out for the season. Raptors forward Kawhi Leonard is “expected to miss a period of weeks” because of swelling in his left knee. Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards may be out for two months because of a knee injury. A torn MCL is set to sideline Jazz big man Jaren Jackson Jr. for 6-8 weeks. Magic forward Paolo
Banchero is out for multiple weeks with a high ankle sprain, while guard Jalen Suggs is out for at least two weeks because of a bone bruise in his right knee. And Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton is out for at least two weeks due to a left hamstring strain.
Those are the major ones, although other teams throughout the league are dealing with various bumps and bruises as well. The Pacers, whom the Sixers faced on Wednesday, were without both Haliburton and starting center Ivica Zubac (ankle), which helped the Sixers escape with a 114-109 road win.
The Sixers are dealing with a handful of injuries as well, although all five of their starters are healthy for now. As long as that remains the case, they’re poised to take advantage of these other absences throughout the league.
The Sixers don’t play the Thunder, Jazz or Timberwolves until the calendar flips to 2027, so Edwards and Jackson might be back by then. (J-Dub and Wallace likely won’t be back for either of the two Sixers-Thunder games in January and February.) However, the Sixers will host the Raptors on Nov. 12 and head to Orlando six days later, which means they could avoid Leonard and Banchero in those games. They also host the Pacers on Nov. 15 and face them again on the first night of a back-to-back in late November, so they might dodge Haliburton in at least one of those games if not both.
Head-to-head results aside, those injuries could prove costly to their respective teams in terms of their win-loss record. And with the East looking especially cutthroat this year, an early-season slide from the Magic and/or Raptors might leave the Sixers with fewer competitors for a top playoff seed. That would be a welcome development, particularly given how much the Sixers might need to load-manage Joel Embiid and LeBron James throughout the regular season.
However, the leaguewide wave of injuries could have one notable long-term consequence for the Sixers.
After this season, Tyrese Maxey will have seven years of NBA experience and will have two years left on his contract. If he doesn’t make an All-NBA team this year, he’ll be eligible to sign a three-year extension next summer starting at 30 percent of the 2029-30 salary cap. If he does make an All-NBA team, he’ll be eligible to sign a four-year extension starting at 35 percent of the 2029-30 salary cap. Those back-to-back All-NBA nods would also automatically qualify him for a five-year supermax extension in 2028, too.
Maxey made the All-NBA third team last year, in part because stars like Edwards, Stephen Curry and Giannis Antetokounmpo weren’t eligible for end-of-season awards since they played in fewer than 65 games. Edwards will likely be ineligible again this season, and Leonard and Haliburton are already in danger of losing their eligibility as well. And again, it’s only the first week of the season. More All-NBA candidates are bound to miss time moving forward.
Heading into the season, it was fair to wonder whether the Sixers’ new star-studded starting five would all cannibalize one another’s production, jeopardizing their chances at All-Star and All-NBA nods. However, through the first five games of the season, Maxey is averaging 28.4 points on 46.2 percent shooting, 4.6 assists and 4.2 rebounds per game. He’s doing all of that while shooting only 32.4 percent from deep, a figure which is bound to come up in the near future.
Maxey was named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week for the first week of the season. He was the only player in the NBA to average at least 25 points, two steals and one block per game over that span, according to the Sixers. If he maintains anywhere near that level of production moving forward and plays in the requisite 65 games, he’ll be in strong contention for an All-NBA nod, if not an outright lock.
Luckily, Maxey is already on a guaranteed contract through 2028-29, so his supermax eligibility wouldn’t impact the Sixers until 2029 at the earliest. However, both Embiid and Jaylen Brown’s contracts are set to expire after the 2028-29 campaign as well—provided, of course, that Embiid picks up his $67.3 million player option for 2028-29—while VJ Edgecombe will become a restricted free agent in 2029 if the Sixers don’t sign him to an extension by the rookie-scale extension deadline in October 2028. That’s a lot of overlapping pieces to juggle.
Again, none of that is a concern this season. All the Sixers need to focus on this year is coalescing and getting 1 percent better every day, as Maxey is fond of saying. But if this early-season wave of injuries does increase Maxey’s probability of earning his second straight All-NBA nod, it could create some long-term financial consequences for the Sixers as early as next summer. How they navigate those will help shape the next era of Sixers basketball after LeBron either leaves or retires.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM.
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