The 2024-25 Sixers didn’t win their fourth game of the season until after Thanksgiving. The 2025-26 Sixers won their fourth game of the season before Halloween.
Yours truly left them for dead Tuesday when
they were down 13 points with less than five minutes remaining against the Washington Wizards. They were on the second night of a back-to-back, Joel Embiid had already hit his minutes limit, and both Paul George and Jared McCain have yet to make their season debut. The Sixers had every reason to pack it in and call it a night. Instead, Tyrese Maxey and Quentin Grimes fueled a ferocious rally to send the game to overtime, where Adem Bona helped ice it with a few massive defensive plays.
The Sixers and Chicago Bulls are now the only remaining undefeated teams left in the Eastern Conference, just as we all predicted a week ago. They’ve needed to eke out three of those four wins in crunch time, and two came against teams that were projected to be among the worst in the East this year. Still, a road win against the Boston Celtics, a home win over an Orlando Magic squad whom many had pegged as a potential dark horse in the East and a come-from-behind win over the Wizards on the second night of a back-to-back are all wins that likely would have been losses last year.
They’ve done all of this without George and McCain and with Embiid playing a grand total of 63 minutes. That begs the question… what happens when George and McCain return and Embiid is no longer on a minutes limit?
Maxey is off to one of the hottest starts in NBA history. VJ Edgecombe has quickly asserted himself as a legitimate challenger to Cooper Flagg in the Rookie of the Year race. Grimes immediately put his contractual standoff behind him and picked up right where he left off last year. The Sixers are also getting invaluable contributions from their supporting cast, especially Kelly Oubre Jr., Andre Drummond, Bona and Dominick Barlow.
Through four games, the Sixers boast the most potent offense in the NBA. (Granted, they have the league’s third-worst defensive rating.) It might not be long before they add George and McCain to that mix, too. Jake Fischer reported on a Bleacher Report livestream that George is likely to return “sometime in early November,” and McCain was putting up shots at shootaround earlier this week.
George had a disappointing debut campaign with the Sixers, and he’s unlikely to ever return positive value on his four-year, $211.6 million max contract. With that said, there’s reason to believe that he could have a bounce-back season as long as he dodges the variety of injuries (knee, pinky, groin) that ailed him last year. With Maxey, Edgecombe and Grimes leading the way, the Sixers don’t need to rely on him as a primary shot-creator. If he toughens up their wing defense and gives them another floor-spacer on offense, anything beyond that will be a bonus.
George wouldn’t be the first player to arrive in Philadelphia and immediately forget how to shoot, but history suggests he’s due for some positive regression this year. He shot only 35.8 percent from deep last season, but he’s a career 38.3 percent long-range shooter and topped the 40 percent mark in three of his previous six seasons. Having multiple drive-and-kick options to suck in defenders should leave him with more open looks, and his gravity beyond the three-point line could help open more driving lanes, too.
The same goes for McCain, who vaulted to the front of the Rookie of the Year race last season before suffering a season-ending meniscus injury in mid-December. Across his final 16 games last year, McCain averaged 19.1 points, 3.2 assists and 3.0 made threes per game while shooting 46.0 percent overall and 39.7 percent from deep. It’s fair to wonder how the McCain-Maxey pairing will fare defensively, but he’ll give the Sixers yet another interchangeable guard who can operate either on or off the ball once he returns.
Then there’s the big fella. After a disappointing season opener against the Boston Celtics, Embiid has started to round back into form over his last two outings. He had a season-high 25 points on 9-of-17 shooting, seven rebounds and five assists in only 23 minutes against the Wizards. Granted, torching a second-year big man is not the same as lighting up Victor Wembanyama or Nikola Jokić, but Embiid’s gradual ramp-up is cause for celebration, not concern. They’re living up to their preseason promise of prioritizing his health over chasing regular-season wins.
If anything, the Sixers’ success sans Embiid might be their most notable early-season takeaway. They’ve had to rely on him to carry them on both ends of the floor for his entire career up until now. If that’s no longer the case and their young backcourt can anchor their offense moving forward, that might only set them up for greater success moving forward.
“I think they’re doing a good job of sharing it with each other, taking opportunities,” head coach Nick Nurse said after the Sixers’ 136-124 win over the Magic on Monday. “It’s a lot of play-on-the-catch stuff. I like the little variety—just not quite sure which one of those guys is going to go, and who is going to screen for who, and all of that kind of stuff.”
When the Sixers were Embiid-centric, their offense was often predictable. On most possessions, they’d try to throw him an entry pass to get him the ball in the post or at the elbow. At that point, he’d survey the floor and decide whether to back down his defender, fire a jumper over them or spray the ball out to a teammate. The Boston Celtics routinely tormented him by taking advantage of that predictability and sending late help defenders.
Having Maxey, Edgecombe, Grimes and eventually McCain taking turns initiating the offense will make the Sixers far more unpredictable. That should make them more difficult to defend, too.
“I’m gonna give a shout-out to Coach Calipari, just because I played in a lot of three-guard lineups in college,” Maxey said at media day. “Coming from high school, I played on the ball, on the ball, on the ball. And then you get to college and it’s three guys that can have the ball, who can push it at all times. That just really helps, especially when you have dynamic shooting, dynamic playmaking, guys who can play off the catch, play off closeouts, guys who can attack the paint. When you can attack the paint and kick out to some of your teammates who can also attack the paint and kick out and make plays, it makes you more dangerous.”
Last year, the Sixers were dangerous to their own fans’ mental health. This year, they appear to be taking out their frustrations from last season on the rest of the league.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Salary Swish and salary-cap information via RealGM.
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