No matter what their strength of schedule might suggest, the Sixers have started the season with a fairly brutal slate of games. They’ve already had two games each against the New York Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers and Detroit Pistons, along with one game against the Boston Celtics and one against the injury-ravaged Indiana Pacers, who were without both Tyrese Haliburton and Ivica Zubac at the time. Sure, they’ve had the occasional Milwaukee Bucks or Chicago Bulls sprinkled in there, but most of their opponents
have been fellow title hopefuls.
Fresh off a demoralizing loss to their longtime rival Boston Celtics on Tuesday, the Sixers have a chance to get right back off the mat and dust themselves off. They’re heading into their easiest stretch of the season yet, which should give them an opportunity to stack wins while continuing to experiment with different lineup combinations and tactical adjustments.
On Thursday, the Sixers are welcoming the depleted Toronto Raptors into town. The Raptors, who blew a huge lead against the Celtics on Wednesday, are on a back-to-back and will be without at least Kawhi Leonard as he works his way back from left knee swelling. They have yet to release their injury report, but Scottie Barnes has missed the Raptors’ past three games with a left groin strain, while both Collin Murray-Boyles (illness) and Immanuel Quickley (hamstring) were originally deemed questionable for Wednesday’s game before eventually playing.
After Thursday’s game against the Raptors, the Sixers have two days off before welcoming the Pacers to town. Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle told reporters Wednesday to “check back in 10 days” on Haliburton’s status, which suggests he’s going to miss Saturday’s game. (For those looking further ahead, the Sixers have another game against Indiana on Nov. 27.)
After hosting the Pacers on Sunday, the Sixers will head to Brooklyn on Monday to take on the Nets in the second night of a back-to-back. They’ll presumably stagger LeBron James and Joel Embiid, much like they did in their first back-to-back of the season against Milwaukee and Detroit. Here’s guessing Embiid plays against the Pacers, which will give him two days off on either side of that game, and LeBron suits up against the Nets.
The Sixers’ brief road trip continues on Wednesday against the Orlando Magic, who could still be without both Paolo Banchero (ankle) and Jalen Suggs (knee). And they wrap up the bum-slaying portion of their calendar at home against the Bucks after two more days of rest. That will be the third game in four days for the currently 1-11 Bucks, who could be running on fumes by the end of the second half.
Embiid and LeBron are both questionable for Thursday’s game against the Raptors, while Dominick Barlow (back) and Adem Bona (cervical spine strain) are still out. There’s a chance that both teams are comically short-handed for that game. Ironically, that could give the Sixers a valuable learning opportunity.
After Tuesday’s loss to the Celtics, head coach Nick Nurse told reporters that the Sixers needed to “see if there isn’t something we can do different” when they deploy small-ball units with Jabari Walker or Dean Wade as the nominal center. “Maybe we can do a little more switching, maybe we can do a little more blitzing, things like that,” he added.
The Raptors have a 7-foot starting center in Jakob Poeltl, but aside from that, they largely skew on the smaller side as well. Thursday’s game could give Nurse and Co. a chance to deploy some tactical changes to their small-ball looks to see how they can better survive defensively despite their glaring lack of rim protection.
As long as the Sixers stay relatively healthy over this upcoming five-game stretch, this should be a golden opportunity for them to stack some early-season wins. Beating up on the dregs of the Eastern Conference won’t tell us anything about how they match up against other title contenders, but they can still derive value from these games.
“We can get better,” Embiid said after Tuesday’s loss to the Celtics. “I keep saying it, I keep repeating it, I don’t really look at the record. I just look at the process of how we’re getting better every day. We can always do a better job in all phases of the game.”
If the Sixers spend all season beating up on bad and/or injury-ravaged teams, they don’t need to sweep the other championship hopefuls as well. Even if they go roughly .500 against the latter, they should still be in solid position for a top-six seed and a guaranteed playoff spot. From there, they’ll just have to pray to the injury gods.
As Tyrese Maxey pointed out after Tuesday’s loss, every one of the Sixers’ starters is “playing a different role than they played last year, and some of them probably ever.” He added that he’s had to adjust like this before, which is easing his acclimation period, but it’s otherwise a work in progress that will take time to smooth out.
The Sixers are going to out-talent their next few opponents. They could rely on iso-ball and sheer force to stack some wins, but that won’t help them in the long run. They need to continue working on optimizing their offensive and defensive schemes, even if that leads to some closer-than-expected games. The more they work on throughout the 82-game regular season, the less they’ll have to figure out on the fly in the playoffs.
With that said, the Sixers would also benefit from a few “professional wins” where they take care of business early against an overmatched team and keep their starters’ minutes in check. The next few games could afford them a chance to do that.
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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