Could concerns about the Sixers’ defense be vastly overstated?

During Nick Nurse’s first three years in Philadelphia, the Sixers’ defense has mostly been… fine? They were 11th leaguewide in defensive rating in 2023-24, fell to 26th during their injury-ravaged 2024-25 campaign and bounced back up to 17th last year.

That’s a far cry from what the Toronto Raptors pulled off in Nurse’s first two years at the helm. They were fifth leaguewide in defensive rating during their championship season in 2018-19 and second the following year.

Granted, Nurse had an incredible

array of defensive personnel during those seasons up north. Kyle Lowry was the point-of-attack defender, Kawhi Leonard and OG Anunoby locked down opposing wings, and Pascal Siakam and Marc Gasol manned the frontcourt. There wasn’t a defensive weak link to be found among them.

The 2026-27 Sixers might not have the same type of defensive ceiling as those late-2010s Raptors. After all, LeBron James is turning 42 in December, while knee injuries have sapped Joel Embiid of the athleticism and mobility that he had when he was younger.

But personnel-wise, the defensive concerns about this year’s squad might be vastly overstated.

“Recently, I don’t feel like I’ve been able to get into my bag of defensive stuff nearly as much as I would like to,” Nurse told reporters after training camp Wednesday after PHLY Sports’ Kyle Neubeck asked him what might be the biggest change from previous years’ Sixers teams. “I think now we’ve got a little bit more depth, size, athleticism. And it may take us a minute, but I think I’m most excited about that.

“I think we just have the capabilities to understand it, execute it, change on the fly, do multiple things, even if it’s once or twice, and get back to normal. All that kind of stuff, that would probably be the biggest (change).”

Most of the concerns about the Sixers defense revolve around James, whose effort has waxed and waned on that end of the floor during the regular season in recent years, and Embiid, who hasn’t been in the Defensive Player of the Year mix since 2022-23. VJ Edgecombe and Jaylen Brown are plus defenders, and Tyrese Maxey has improved on defense since entering the league, but can LeBron and Embiid hold up their end of the bargain?

Edgecombe made it clear Tuesday that he isn’t afraid to correct James despite the experience gap between them.

“No, I’m myself,” he told reporters. “I’m myself. I told him, I was like, I mean, like, if we have a possession, so I’d be like, ‘Yo, Bron, we’ve got to switch that. We got to do it, you know what I’m saying?’ Like, whoever, we are holding each other accountable. I said, ‘We’re teammates now, man.'”

During the season premiere of Mind the Game, LeBron made clear that accountability will be the key to the Sixers having an above-average defense this season.

“I’ve been able to be on some really good defensive teams in my career,” he said. “Defense always comes down to the first thing, pride. It’s a pride thing. I’m not going to allow my guy to continue to exploit me or beat me or whatever the case may be. There has to be some kind of pride in the sense of that.

“And at the end of the day, the best defense never stops the best offense anyways, and that’s OK. But if we can make teams uncomfortable, if we can make teams turn the ball over, if we can make teams not be in a rhythm like they’re accustomed to be in a rhythm versus other teams, then it gives us another opportunity. It gives us more possessions. We want to try to win the possession game.

“And I think with Coach Nurse and the things that I’ve seen with his teams in the past, especially the [2018-19] Raptors team that won a championship, that’s what they did. They got up into you, they got into the passing lane. If you got around one guy, there’s another guy helping you. Obviously with OG and Pascal and Kyle, Marc Gasol being on that team, there was a lot of high-IQ guys as well to be able to do that. And I’m looking forward to seeing if we can kind of translate a little bit of that as well.

“‘Cause we have the speed. We have the athleticism. Now it’s about do we have the discipline to actually be able to take that on the defensive end and hold each other accountable, too. ‘Cause that’s what it’s about. You’ve gotta force guys into contested twos. Try not to give up straight-line drives. Don’t give up corner threes. And then we’ve gotta rebound. As fast and athletic as we can be, we can’t do shit if we don’t get the rebound.”

Rebounding has not been a strong suit of the Sixers under Nurse. They’ve been in the bottom third of the league in rebounding percentage in each of his three seasons. Losing Andre Drummond in free agency this past summer likely won’t help in that regard, either.

But to Nurse’s point, the Sixers now have more size to throw at opponents, even if their depth chart at center behind Embiid still looks iffy for now.

Not only did they add the 6’9″ James and the 6’6″ Brown, whom Maxey called a “freak of nature” at training camp on Wednesday, but they also added 6’9″ forward Dean Wade and 7’0″ center Ariel Hukporti. Wade made a name for himself in Cleveland with his defensive acumen, and he was the early favorite to start at power forward for the Sixers this year until they landed LeBron. Having him and Dominick Barlow coming off the bench will be a major defensive upgrade over what they trotted out last year.

Given how many new pieces they have to integrate this season, it could take time for the Sixers to hit their stride defensively. Nurse alluded as much Wednesday. They might not have a top-10 defensive rating during the regular season, particularly if Embiid misses significant time.

But as LeBron pointed out at media day, the amount of sacrifice that the starters will have to make this year could have positive trickle-down effects for the Sixers’ defense.

“Sometimes in sports, people hear sacrifice, you automatically, people start thinking negatively about it,” LeBron said. “It’s not a negative thing. You sacrifice one or two more shots, that gives you one or two more bursts of energy in the fourth quarter to slide over and take a charge, or give you one or two more bursts of energy to get an offensive rebound for an extra possession to kick out for a teammate or an extra two bursts of energy to run back on defense and get a chase-down block. Some things that don’t show up in the box scores.

“So it’s not a negative when people say, OK, you have to make a sacrifice or your role may change. If we’re trying to do something special, which I believe we are, then that’s a positive.”

It’s time for Nurse to tap back into his mad-scientist mode on defense. If the Sixers can pair an elite offense with an above-average defense, that should cement them as a legitimate championship contender this year, health permitting.

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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