This upcoming regular season is the most exciting and anticipated one of this era of Sixers basketball and then some. Not only has Philadelphia loaded up their roster with aspirations of winning the conference and more, but over half the East has done the same.
The word bold would normally go before the word “predictions” in a piece like this. Between the reigning NBA champions, some of the biggest offseason moves in league history, and the potential for former powerhouses to return from injured form,
this is one of the hardest seasons to predict. None of these feel like particularly bold predictions, but here are five Sixers things I’m expecting to happen this season.
Joel Embiid leads the Sixers in scoring again
Though I don’t expect him to qualify for any sort of scoring title. The big question for this team is how are they going to spread just the one basketball around such a talented starting five. How often that starting five actually plays together will go a long way in answering that question. At the risk of jinxing him, I do think Embiid will be on the court a lot this season barring something really going wrong (knock on every piece of wood you can see).
When Embiid is on the court, he’s the one starter I see the rest of the team bending their game to the most. Working out of the free throw line area, Embiid makes as much sense as any to operate as a hub from the free throw line area. He proved last season that when he’s going offensively, he’s still plenty dominant to command double teams as he tries to attack the basket.
Those double teams will be deadly with the full starting five on the court — there’s just not going to be anyone on the floor the defense feels comfortable leaving alone. If that premise is true, and Embiid is who the healthy starting five functions around, he will be the leading scorer on this team easily.
After wracking up multiple scoring titles, Embiid’s points per game obviously took a big hit in the 2024-25 season when he was only able to play 19 games. He spent a good part of the first half of last season ramping back up into shape and only got on the floor for 38 games, but he still nearly caught up to Tyrese Maxey in points per game despite Maxey’s torrid start to the season. Embiid finished last year at 26.9 points per game compared to Maxey’s 28.3. With all the messaging from the team, including Maxey himself that he’s going to be playing off the ball more this year, I predict the Sixers to have a new top scorer this season. Well, somewhat new.
Dominick Barlow is the best internal option at backup center
Speaking of messaging, I’m not loving what we’re hearing about Barlow out of training camp so far. He’s one of three Sixers who didn’t play in preseason this year with an injury. While Anfernee Simons and Adem Bona are back on the practice court, the Sixers have yet to provide a timeline on Barlow as he deals with some sort of back issue.
The sooner he’s able to get back on the floor the better, as the season-ending injury to Ariel Hukporti has put stress on the backup center position before the regular season has even started. Barlow didn’t play a ton of minutes at the five last season, only 10% of his minutes, according to Cleaning the Glass.
The biggest sample might have been their second round slaughter by the New York Knicks, where Barlow was thrown in there as a necessity with Embiid and Andre Drummond just unable to keep up with New York’s big men. Barlow acquitted himself fairly well in that time, helping provide some of the only competitive minutes of that series.
He doesn’t give you the option to stretch the floor like Jabari Walker is appearing to, he is not going to protect the rim with the springiness of Bona, but he does meet in the middle of those two in terms of rebounding prowess and athleticism. He’s generally been long enough and strong enough to defend centers bigger than him. There will be nights where the Sixers wish they have a bigger look or one with more rim protection, but Barlow is currently the best option to backup Embiid on any given night, and the Sixers should hope he’s able to get back on the floor sooner rather than later.
Tacko Fall plays real minutes
To that end, hopefully this Barlow injury isn’t serious. The backup center situation is such a conundrum because the Sixers can’t do much about it for quite some time. They can’t sign another free agent until mid December, and then they’ll only have a minimum contract to offer. They can make a trade, but those are difficult with how close the Sixers are to their first apron hard cap.
They’re going to have to get creative to eat innings Embiid is not available for, especially if their supposed backup option is already dealing with an injury. Walker and Bona can hopefully fill a lot of these minutes, but they, as well as Barlow, lack the true size for the biggest matchups in the league. While Fall may not be able to provide anything else, he certainly provides that.
It may become apparent quick that Fall, who hasn’t played in the NBA since 2022, was only on an Exhibit 10 contract that was converted this weekend, and missed most of training camp with a hip injury, isn’t a playable option at all. When the Sixers run into some big teams early, such as the Detroit Pistons on a back-to-back in the first week of the season, they may be pulling out all the stops at the center position.
The Sixers finish exactly as the four seed
This will definitely be the one you can yell at me for. While there will certainly be some growing pains as this group figures each other out, I’m not as concerned with this as others have expressed. Despite the backup center concerns, the roster is objectively improved over the group that won 46 games last year, and there’s enough infrastructure to improve on that.
The problem is the East is loaded and there could be some teams to rack up some wins. It’s been hard to predict the seeding of this conference because I do think the Sixers will win a lot of games — I also think there might be some regular season machines in the East. Of these four teams, I expect three to finish ahead of the Sixers in the standings: the New York Knicks, Boston Celtics, Pistons and Toronto Raptors.
The Raptors could very well have the best defense in the league. They are going to be annoying to play no matter how many times Kawhi Leonard is in the lineup. Detroit won the most games last season and while they had a weird offseason, there’s nothing to indicate they can’t come close to replicating that regular season success.
The Celtics have been lock for over 50 wins, and now they’re getting their best player back for what they hope is a full season of health. If there’s one team in this group that might fall behind the Sixers, it might be the reigning champions. The vibes in New York haven’t felt great as they’ve struggled to give contract extensions to some of their biggest pieces. It’s also a group that has coasted through stretches of the regular season in years past.
This season I predict the Sixers to have homecourt in the first round of the playoffs, but it will be a battle to get it, which would create a whole lot of discourse around my next prediction.
Four out of five Sixers’ starters make the All-Star game
This year’s Sixers will come just short of matching the 2015 Hawks. Embiid, Maxey, LeBron James and Jaylen Brown are all going to have really good years. VJ Edgecombe will too, he’ll make the kind of second year leap that will have everyone in the Delaware Valley thanking their lucky stars the ping pong balls fell the right way in 2025.
He’ll fall just short of making his first All-Star game in his second season for one reason: the Sixers won’t be high enough in the standings to justify their entire starting five making an All-Star game. For better or for worse, team record does come into account in close calls when it comes to All-Star voting. The entire starting five will make great cases this year, but voters will have a hard time putting them all in if there are a few teams ahead of the Sixers in the standings.
