It’s got to be a tricky position to be in if you’re Sixers head coach Nick Nurse. Heading into a 2025-2026 NBA season where none of us really know how much the team will get out of their Big 3 — Joel Embiid, Paul George and Tyrese Maxey — how might Nurse possibly game plan for whatever wonky conundrum this has become?
The obvious parallel, not from a pure injury standpoint so much as… other reasons, brings to mind the 2021-2022 Brooklyn Nets. In their first go-round, Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie
Irving tantalized fans in Round 1 of of the 2021 NBA playoffs, taking out the Boston Celtics in just five games. But then injuries to both Harden and Irving allowed the Milwaukee Bucks to squeek by KD and co.
The next season, KD (knee), Harden (fried hamstrings) and Irving (vaccine status), could barely stack a handful of games before it all blew up. Adding Ben Simmons (mental health/career-altering back injury) sure wasn’t it.
Fast forward, and the Nets blew things up and wound up selecting a league record five total first-round picks back in June’s NBA Draft. The current Nets eventually found their direction, trading all of their All-Stars for future assets or rising stars. The Sixers on the other hand don’t yet know theirs… even if they think they do.
If Embiid can play basketball this season, he’ll be out there in some form or another… always a game-time decision, perhaps. If George can throw back the clock following a knee procedure, that would certainly do wonders for the team still light on the wing. But in mid-August, ESPN Senior Writer Ramona Shelburne offered an interesting nugget for us, on an appearance on “NBA Today:”
“I’ll say this. All the videos I see, all the word I get out of Philly is that Tyrese Maxey, and McCain, and the younger guys in VJ Edgecombe, they’ve all been in the gym all summer long,” Shelburne said. “Embiid, Paul George miss a lot of time last year. That young group, they may not wait. They may not be able to wait.”
Well, if we still don’t know if Embiid will be ready for the start of the season, as our Harrison Grimm warned us Nurse recently hinted a possibility, and we have no idea if he’ll follow up that agonizing pattern from last season (where he’d suit up then need to rest or not play at all), it would make sense for Nurse to design an offense that doesn’t rely on Joel or PG.
Our Josh Grieb pointed that out when Embiid did play last season, he led the team in usage percentage, despite comments prior to the 2024-2025 campaign that he wanted to play more of a facilitating role. He simply needed to make more adjustments he wasn’t prepared to make even as his body failed him. It was weird for both Embiid to even attempt, given how he looked, and it was arguably even weirder for Nurse to greenlight. But Shelburne’s comments that the young core may not wait for Joel and PG could become salient here.
An uptempo brand of ball certainly won’t be very conducive to Embiid’s acclimation. Nor will it be conducive to PG’s return. Yet the idea of featuring those two iso-heavy vets in halfcourt sets when it’s Maxey, VJ Edgecombe and Jared McCain, who will be healthy and in rhythm, would be pretty odd, no? I’d predict there would eventually be tension at best, if they’re even fortunate enough to have that type of stylistic dilema.
If you were Nick Nurse, what type of offensive scheme would you be considering with such massive question marks in the middle and on the wing? And how would you prepare for any potential “whose team is this?” factions? It’s all shaping up to be one unique and bizarre offseason for this team. But at least we can look forward to witnessing Edgecombe, McCain and Maxey soon enough.
