The Sixers continue the battle to escape the play-in, and they’ve been more or less healthy for the first time in a while (knock on wood). That leaves Nick Nurse with a deceptively simple question: Who should be the team’s fifth starter alongside Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, Paul George, and VJ Edgecombe (henceforth the team’s “core four”)?

There are two main options, with both Dominick Barlow and Kelly Oubre Jr. seeing time throughout the year to close out the lineup. And while that might sound like a simple either-or decision on the surface, the reality is a bit messier once you dig into the details.

For starters, injuries have cost us the ability to see these lineups consistently. The most-used Sixers lineup — Barlow with the core four — has just 396 non-garbage time possessions, or roughly four games’ worth of data. The Oubre version is even thinner at 220 possessions, or just over two games. None of the other combinations even clear the 100-possession threshold typically needed for lineup evaluation. For reference, several teams are starting to have lineups with over 1000 possessions. It (almost) makes you feel a little bad for Nick Nurse.

Now that doesn’t mean we can’t evaluate them at all; we just need to be a bit more careful with how we approach the context around the numbers. And even in the minutes that we do have, none of these lineups has been world-beating.

The core four with Barlow sit at a mediocre +1.2 points per 100 possessions, and the core four with Oubre are similarly uninspiring at just +2.5 points per 100 possessions. Those are still better than the overall Sixers squad — who still suffer the ignoble title of having a negative net rating as a prospective playoff team — but are distinctly poor when compared to other five-man units across the NBA.

Unfortunately, while neither option has been particularly impressive, we have to choose one of them. We can’t just trot out the core four and call it a day. So how do we differentiate between the two? It all comes down to tradeoffs and what you’re willing to live with.

To this point in the year, Barlow in the starting lineup has been much stronger defensively than the Oubre lineup, giving up a 112.7 defensive rating in non-garbage time (60th percentile), but not quite as successful on offense, with just a 113.9 offensive rating (32nd percentile).

A lot of that lineup’s defensive success stems from better defensive rebounding — though “better” is just the 39th percentile; it’s still the Sixers, after all — and limiting fouls. They have also been much more effective at keeping teams off the 3-point line and forcing a high volume of midrange looks, perhaps due to Barlow’s switchability.

However, offensively, the Barlow lineup can struggle to make shots. Opponents clog the paint, helping off Barlow’s lack of perimeter shooting — 3 of 18 on threes since the all-star break, and zero since March 15th — which shrinks the space for everyone else. In a playoff setting, where defenses are more deliberate about exploiting weak links, that pressure point is only going to get louder.

On the flip side, Oubre in the starting lineup — which is what Nurse has gone to in the last two games — has been much more impactful offensively, posting a 122.3 offensive rating in their minutes, while struggling more defensively, posting a 119.7 defensive rating.

The key driver of the offensive success has been 3-point shooting, with the Oubre starting lineup hitting 40.8% of their threes. Their halfcourt execution overall also sees a big jump, ranking in the 86th percentile among all 5-man lineups. Stick four shooters around Joel and you’ll have success on offense, who knew!

They lose much of the offensive rebounding volume and putback efficiency that Barlow provides, but when they can space the floor effectively, it cures all offensive ailments. Oubre in particular has been excellent when playing off of the big guy, hitting over 48% of his triples when sharing the floor with Joel overall. There’s some obvious regression risk baked into that number, but there’s also enough shooting around him to soften the drop if it comes.

Defensively, the issues will sound familiar to every Sixers fan who’s watched a game this year: rebounding and transition.

Their defensive rebounding has predictably struggled with Oubre as our fifth, allowing opponents to get back over one in every three misses (12th percentile). However, not only are they giving up a high rate of offensive rebounds, but they are also getting absolutely shredded on second-chance opportunities, sitting in the 0th percentile (a.k.a. the worst five-man lineup in the league) and giving up a 214.3 offensive rating on putbacks. Now obviously, there are some small sample size caveats here where the opponent scoring rate is highly unlikely to stay that high. But without Barlow’s (still just mediocre) defensive rebounding at the 4, this lineup has no way to end possessions.

The same lackadaisical approach extends to transition play, where they are once again defending at the level of the worst five-man lineup in the league (not a phrase I should ever be typing twice in an article).

So where does that leave us? Right back at the tradeoff. Who you want to start comes down to what aspects of the team performance you want to prioritize — offense and shooting with Oubre, or defense and rebounding with Barlow?

My personal opinion is they should start with Barlow, both because our rebounding is so lackluster without him and because of his burgeoning partnership with Joel. But Nurse can rely on the hot hand in each matchup to decide how he wants to close the game.

Regardless of who they choose, the starting five Nurse ultimately plans to go with needs to get consistent minutes as much as possible over the next three games so they can enter the playoffs with some confidence. There’s no perfect answer here, but the Sixers need to decide which version of themselves they trust when it matters.

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Who is this team?

The Sixers put together two professional wins over the Bulls and Hornets, and the vibes are right back to an all-time high. We’re officially in the “tease” period, as Spike and Mike called it on the most recent pod. Joel Embiid and Paul George returning make the Sixers immediately look like an actual NBA basketball team — a notable shift from whatever farce we were throwing out for the few weeks before that.

They clearly have an impact on their own, but is there any additional change they’re causing on the players around them? And if so, who are they impacting the most? That’s where things start to get a bit more interesting than the obvious “they’re good players” takeaway.

Let’s start with the obvious point: the Sixers are simply better with them on the floor. This is fairly clear to anyone who has paid a modicum of attention to the Sixers at any point, but for those who doubt the true veracity of that statement, please see this article from earlier in the season. If you’re still doubtful, consider that the Sixers are +8.0 points per 100 possessions better with Joel on the floor and +9.4 better with PG on the floor (his defensive impact is real!). This extends to any combination of the two, with an excellent statistical profile together, and each holding a positive net rating when having to carry the team on their own. That may be more surprising for PG, but every single player he has played with on the Sixers has won their minutes by more with him than without him.

So yes, the baseline takeaway is simple: the Sixers are better when their stars play. The more interesting question is what happens beyond that. Who else are they helping?

Dominick Barlow, for one, sticks out as being far better playing with Joel and PG than not. He is the only player whose scoring doesn’t fall significantly with the 2nd- and 3rd-leading scorers on the team added to the mix, averaging right around 12 points per 75 possessions with or without them. But the way he gets those points is far more impactful, particularly with Joel, as Barlow’s efficiency spikes way up, with a 6.1 percentage point better TS% with Joel than without.

The reason for that is his rim pressure, taking over 71% of his shots at the rim with Joel on the floor compared to just 46% when he’s off — given Barlow’s much higher efficiency at the rim compared to on 3’s or midrange looks, it’s easy to see how his productivity takes a jump. It makes a ton of sense why this is the case, as Joel adds far more spacing with his midrange and 3-point willingness than Andre Drummond or Adem Bona, who clog up the paint more. Joel also seems to have a great feel for Barlow’s off-ball cutting when he gets doubled, which actually lets him leverage the space into points.

In addition, without anyone else taking up space at the rim, Barlow’s individual offensive rebounding rate nearly doubles, crashing the rim far more aggressively into the empty space. We spent the last month or so wondering why Barlow had hit a wall since getting his new contract, and it turns out he was probably just missing Joel.

He appears to have a positive impact on Joel’s minutes too with his interior activity (see the lineup graphic below), which also makes sense given Joel’s clear decrease in interior activity. Pairing them together more consistently could provide a boost to both of their minutes — and to be fair, Kate and Alaa did mention Nick Nurse liked this pairing on the broadcast yesterday, so he might be on it.

VJ Edgecombe is another excellent example of a player who gets better with our stars back. Without having to carry the offense for stretches, he can utilize his athleticism and impressive game feel to attack off the advantages Joel and (to a lesser extent) PG create with their gravity.

It shows up in his efficiency, with an 8.8 percentage point increase in TS% with Joel and a 6.7 percentage point increase with PG. Most of that once again comes from leveraging the space Joel and PG provide, as VJ gets to the rim more frequently with either of them on the court, and he is also finishing those chances much better with Joel on the floor — 67.1% rim finishing with Joel compared to 53.2% without.

The looks he gets are simpler as well, as VJ cuts his off-the-dribble midrange volume nearly in half and sees a notable increase in the percentage of his baskets that are assisted. His volume falls off somewhat in the process, which is fairly expected given the heliocentrism of our stars, but it’s gotten to a point where it feels like every shot he takes as an auxiliary piece is going in at this point. As impressively far ahead of schedule as VJ has been in his rookie year, this off-ball role is a much cleaner fit with his current skillset, allowing him to attack advantages and leverage spacing instead of having to create his own looks in a more bogged-down offense.

And in a lot of ways, that’s the common thread here. Joel and PG don’t just raise the team’s ceiling — they simplify the game for everyone else on the floor.

When you’re watching the basketball slop that the Sixers have provided us for the last month, it’s easy to simply accept that as just who the team is, and forget how critical Joel and PG are to the team’s success. Not just through their own individual impact, but also through their impact on the players around them.

Their spacing in particular opens up a massive amount of offense that simply isn’t available with our more 3-point-averse players on the floor (really makes you wonder how much Mike’s lifelong dream of a floor-spacing big could help). Barlow and VJ are the clearest examples of that impact, but throw on any Sixers game and you’ll see the shift in the way Joel and PG warp the court for others.

I won’t make any declarative proclamations about the playoffs or anything else, but if they’ve somehow fully made it past the most recent injury bug (or PED bug in PG’s case) — a statement I am already regretting typing out — this version of the Sixers has a chance to be at least competitive and entertaining. And that’s an outcome I am more than happy to live with.

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Time for the best time of the year… March Madness. Endless games, crazy upsets, what’s not to like? As a Sixers fan, I came into this year prepared to have no stake in the game, given our top-four-protected pick that was traded to the Thunder a million years ago, but all of a sudden, we have a handy-dandy first-rounder from the Rockets courtesy of the Jared McCain trade. We could get anyone with this draft pick to add to our young core! Who knows, maybe we’ll even get someone like Jared McCain?

As we get closer to the true draft season, I’ll start to put out a bit more information on the draft class as a whole. But given the wonderful time of the year we are in, it makes sense to provide some teams to watch that the Sixers’ front office might be watching as well.

I’m generally focusing on teams with high-profile wings and bigs, given the clear lack of availability we have for any guard spots — no, I’m not bitter about the Jared McCain trade at all, I swear. However, if you have the itch and want to watch some entertaining guards that will be available around our likely early-20s range, some fun additional options to the list below are: Tyler Tanner (Vanderbilt), Chris Anderson (Texas Tech), and Bennett Stirtz (Iowa). Now let’s dive into the rest (sorted by team for ease of scouting).

Michigan (1 seed):

First Game: Thurs, Mar 19th at 7:10 PM EST vs Howard (16 seed)

Players to Scout: Yaxel Lendeborg (14.6 PPG, 7.0 RPG, 3.2 APG), Morez Johnson (13.1 PPG, 7.2 RPG, 1.1 BPG), & Aday Mara (11.6 PPG, 6.9 RPG, 2.6 BPG)

If you’re looking for a big, Michigan is the clear-cut best place to start. They have been one of the top-three teams in the country all year, and do so by dominating the paint on both sides of the ball, playing a gargantuan starting lineup that includes Yaxel Lendeborg (6’9”, 7’4” wingspan), Morez Johnson (6’9”, 7’2” wingspan), and Aday Mara (7’3”, 7’7” wingspan).

Lendeborg is the most versatile of the three, earning first-team All-American honors with capable three-point scoring and strong playmaking in addition to his interior dominance. His only real weakness is his age, as he will be 24 by the start of the 2026-27 season. He’s unlikely to last all the way to the Sixers given his versatility and impact, but he would be a strong candidate if he did slide.

Johnson and Mara are more traditional bigs who would fall into a backup big role behind Joel and/or potentially develop into the starter next to Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe in a post-Joel future. Johnson fits into more of an Isaiah Stewart mold as an ultra-athletic wrecking ball defensively. He has some promising shooting indicators, even if he has not taken many threes this year, but most of his offense for Michigan comes off of assists at the rim (which would help Mike’s lob data numbers if we had a guard who could throw them).

Mara is a bit more versatile — and is an early favorite on my personal big board – with effective post-up moves and incredible playmaking for his size. He’s also the core defensive anchor for the Wolverines as one of the best block threats in the country. Mara has struggled with any kind of shooting touch and is good for the occasional Grimes-esque hair-on-fire giveaway, but the flashes could project to a high-level starter.

Arizona (1-seed):

First Game: Fri, Mar 20th at 1:35 PM EST vs LIU (16 seed)

Players to Scout: Brayden Burries (15.9 PPG, 4.7 RPG, 2.5 APG), Koa Peat (13.6 PPG, 5.3 RPG, 2.7 APG), & Motiejus Krivas (10.5 PPG, 8.1 RPG, 1.8 BPG)

The Wildcats join Michigan in the rarified air of having multiple potential Sixers prospects on the roster. First is scoring wing Brayden Burries (6’4”). He is one of the few guard-size prospects I have listed in the main section here, because of his size and capability to defend up, similar to Edgecombe. Burries is an incredibly balanced prospect who scores at all three levels, is a willing playmaker, and would join Edgecombe and Maxey to threaten in transition even further. The odds of him falling to the mid-20s aren’t great, but he would be a great value if he reaches the Sixers.

If you want to look a little bigger, Zona has two dominant bigs in Koa Peat and Motiejus Krivas. For full transparency, I’m not super high on Peat (6’8”, 6’11” wingspan), who is sized like a wing at the NBA level, but profiles more like a center with his play style, relying on interior scoring and offensive rebounding. However, plenty of people more experienced than me have him ranked around the Sixers’ range, highlighting his motor, strength, and effective playmaking from the big spot.

I’m more of a fan of Krivas (7’2”, 7’5” wingspan), who profiles as one of the best rim protectors in this class and dominates as a rebounder on both sides of the ball. He’s not the playmaker or self-creator that Mara from Michigan is, but his FT generation and strong shooting indicators (77% FT% in his career) could provide more future floor-spacing opportunities if he’s able to develop.

Alabama (4 seed):

First Game: Fri, Mar 20th at 3:15 PM EST vs Hofstra (13 seed)

Players to Scout: Amari Allen (11.7 PPG, 7.1 RPG, 37% 3P%) & Labaron Philon (21.7 PPG, 4.7 APG, 40% 3P%)

The Crimson Tide play host to one of my favorite potential Sixers prospects in Amari Allen (6’8”), a traitsy freshman wing. Allen is extremely versatile with excellent playmaking for his size, and can score from beyond the arc, attacking off closeouts, or getting to the FT line. Add on his capable defensive playmaking and switchability, and you have a prospect profile that lacks any major holes. He is the exact kind of prospect that rises on draft boards late, similar to a Cedric Coward last year — but if he’s available, I’d be very happy with this pick.

A less likely draft option is Labaron Philon, a high-usage combo guard who returned to Alabama this season even after getting first-round draft buzz last year. The issue? He stands at 6’4” and only weighs 185 lbs. That being said, Philon would still tempt me with his blazing-quick first step, elite playmaking, and ability to score efficiently at all three levels, often on high-difficulty attempts. He would be an incredible value at our draft slot if he falls this far, similar to the Maxey pick in 2020, though I’m doubtful the front office would look to pair Philon with our already small backcourt (and I can’t entirely blame them). Regardless, he’ll be a fun player to watch this March as he tears through the lane in Alabama’s fast-tempo offense.

Texas (11 seed):

First Game: Thurs, Mar 19th at 7:25 PM EST vs BYU (6 seed)

Players to Scout: Dailyn Swain (17.7 PPG, 7.6 RPG, 3.4 APG)

One of the most common names being thrown around for the Sixers resides with the Texas Longhorns: third-year wing Dailyn Swain (6’7”). Swain is one of the more unique prospects in this year’s draft, playing with a Giannis-esque style that lets him get to the rim and FT line at will while creating for his teammates as a dangerous playmaker. For those looking to take a risk, the ceiling outcome for Swain next to Maxey and Edgecombe is incredibly enticing with his size and skill. However, he has a key weakness in his three-point shooting, which is the reason he may be available to the Sixers in the first place. He has shown effective touch (82% FT% in his career on high volume) and is knocking down 35% of his three-point looks this season, but the development of that swing skill will determine Swain’s ultimate role at the next level.

Texas’ first-round matchup adds extra intrigue as Swain will likely be matched up against AJ Dybantsa, a consensus top-three prospect at the wing position and the leading scorer in college basketball. If both players can get going, that matchup will be must-see TV.

Iowa State (2 seed):

First Game: Fri, Mar 20th at 2:50 PM EST vs TN State (15 seed)

Players to Scout: Joshua Jefferson (16.9 PPG, 7.9 RPG, 4.9 APG)

In a similar mold to Swain is first-team All-American Joshua Jefferson (6’8”). Jefferson is a slightly older prospect as a senior (22 years old), but he is one of the best playmakers in the country for his size and can operate as a playmaking hub in the middle of the floor — I can already picture the DHOs with Maxey and backdoor lobs to Edgecombe. Pair that with a strong frame and excellent defensive metrics, and it’s easy to see a two-way impact at the next level. Once again, though, we return to the shooting, with inconsistent touch from beyond the arc and at the FT line for his career. His volume and efficiency are both up this year, but it’s hard to imagine Jefferson as a major three-point threat at the next level.

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The tanking narrative has taken the NBA by storm. How dare these teams intentionally lose games in an effort to get a higher draft pick! And some of this outrage is valid: I’m not a fan of what some teams like the Jazz are doing, sitting their best players in the fourth quarter when a game is close. That’s unethical tanking — taking a team good enough to win and intentionally holding it back. We may need to bring back Sam Hinkie to show them how good, old-fashioned, respectable tanking is really done. Those Sixers teams were genuinely horrendous, no matter how hard they tried.

However it’s done, tanking is an inevitable part of the NBA. And the reason why is fairly simple.

This is a league where getting a generational player on your team is the key to winning at the highest level. And unless you’re the Lakers — who apparently wake up every morning to a trade offer sending them Luka Doncic for a bag of potato chips — the best way to get these players is the draft. And the best way to maximize the odds of drafting a star capable of carrying your team is by picking early. Pair that with the fact that the current CBA effectively allows teams to control a drafted player for the first 10 years of their career, and it’s easy to see the value of an early selection. These are all generalizations, and there are exceptions to the rule, of course, but on the whole, the draft is the best option in the current NBA landscape for building a team from the ground up.

Take that clear value of early draft picks and combine it with the fact that a worse record gives you a better chance at a higher draft pick, and voilà, the magic of tanking is revealed. And to be clear, this is how it should work! You want to have a balanced league where teams that are bad have a chance to cycle back around and be competitive again. The Pistons and Spurs are good examples of horrible teams flipping around after hitting on a star to lead the team, in Cade Cunningham and Victor Wembanyama, respectively.

So what’s the problem here? Why are the NBA and the media that cover the league so upset?

It’s that there are too many teams doing it (and potentially that it’s messing with their gambling partnerships, but that’s naturally not an endorsed reason from the league). You can make a real argument that nine teams are actively trying to lose games in the NBA. They’re easy to find — just look at the bottom of the standings. Add in the Pelicans, who have no incentive to lose, but are just bad (except on Fly the Process games), and a full third of the league is effectively a bye game for the other two-thirds of the league. That makes for a bad product.

So the NBA has come out with some grandstanding, mentioning how they are going to make “substantial changes” after this year to solve the problem. The NBA has never tried to fix this before, so at least finally they… oh wait no, they have tried. About five different times, in fact. And wouldn’t you know it, those changes — most notably the flattened lottery odds — are the exact reason we’re in this predicament in the first place (more on that in a minute).

Unfortunately, the NBA has not learned from this fact and has come up with several potential solutions to fix this tanking problem once and for all. To be fair, most of these ideas come from a reasonable place. The league wants to discourage teams from intentionally losing games. The problem is that many of these proposals underestimate how quickly teams adapt to whatever incentive structure the rules create. I’ve always loved game theory, so let’s put on our economist hats and walk through why each is likely to do nothing at best or backfire horribly at worst.

Flatten odds for all lottery teams: Let’s start with the worst of them all. The whole reason we’re in this tanking fiasco in the first place is that the NBA already flattened the odds once, which gave teams farther down the standings the hope of jumping into the top four and landing a generational talent. And the thing is, they’re right to believe it (see Dallas and San Antonio last year). By spreading those odds across more teams, the league didn’t eliminate tanking; it just made tanking appealing to a larger portion of the standings. If anything, the odds should tilt more heavily toward the worst teams so they can actually find their way out of purgatory. Flatten them further, and you won’t reduce tanking — you’ll just encourage more teams to join in and potentially even lose their way out of a playoff/play-in position like the 2022-23 Mavericks.

First-round draft picks can be protected only for top-four or top-14-plus selections: One of their better ideas. I can see where they’re coming from: Removing protections entirely means we won’t have scenarios like the Jazz trying to keep a top-8 protected pick away from the Thunder this year (though the Jazz would probably be tanking regardless, to be frank). But limiting protections to top-4 or top-14 just creates a new arbitrary cutoff for teams to tank toward.

Lottery odds freeze at the trade deadline or a later date: Sure, teams won’t intentionally tank after the decided date, but the incentives for bad teams getting high picks don’t change, so this just means teams will tank earlier in the year.

No longer allowing a team to pick in the top four in consecutive years and/or after consecutive bottom-three finishes: *Taps the sign* The whole point of the draft is to get bad teams back to relevance! Stop trying to make it harder! Even if we remove that factor, this incentivizes other teams farther down the order to tank harder because they are competing against a smaller pool of teams.

Lottery odds allocated based on two-year records: The only thing better than teams tanking for one year… is teams tanking for multiple years.

Lottery extended to include all play-in teams: My finger is starting to hurt from all this sign-tapping. Why would a team that’s actively in the playoffs need a star player more than the worst team in the league?

Teams can’t pick in the top four the year after making the conference finals: Genuinely just why??? Any team that was just in the conference finals is not being intentionally bad; they just got hit with horrible luck (i.e., this year’s Pacers with Haliburton’s torn achilles).

Moral of the story? You can’t make changes that remove the team record from the draft slot equation, or you lose out on the entire purpose of the draft itself: to improve bad teams. This year features an elite draft class, so naturally, there’s going to be tanking. More than likely, the NBA will make a change this offseason, teams will tank less because of a worse 2027 Draft, and the league representatives will scream from the rooftops that they fixed the problem until the next wave comes back around.

The NBA needs to stop trying to remove tanking from the game entirely and instead try to limit its volume. If there were just three or four tanking teams, it wouldn’t be getting even close to the volume of backlash there is currently. Stop expanding the lottery just to give more teams a shot at the players meant to turn bad teams into contenders.

There are various ideas that could be more impactful for changing the incentives or applications of those incentives. My personal favorite: remove the lottery entirely for the top two picks and actually give those to the two worst records and then make it so you can’t receive a top-two pick in back-to-back years. Some other ideas I personally like better than those currently proposed are un-flattening the lottery odds, shifting the lottery higher (i.e., only the top-10 picks), or rewarding teams/players for wins with monetary incentives. Regardless of the exact solution, you have to induce a change in the incentives causing the middling teams to tank, not those at the bottom.

Tanking isn’t some mysterious flaw in the NBA ecosystem. It’s the natural result of a league where the worst teams get the best chance at the best players. You can flatten the lottery odds, freeze them at the trade deadline, or invent a dozen other tweaks, but incentives will always win. As long as the draft is the fastest path to a superstar, some teams will decide losing today is the best way to win tomorrow.

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Man, the Sixers don’t make it easy on you. All the good vibes you could have in a season, and as a reward, we Sixers fans are blessed with a Paul George suspension, a Jared McCain trade, and a part 638 to the Joel Embiid injury saga — and that’s even before the absolute embarrassment they provided for the loyal Fly the Process fandom. (Of course, they did respond by trouncing a quality Timberwolves team and blowing out the Pacers, but I view that as more of a sadistic fandom methodology, trying to pull us back in with an unpredictable win every once in a while so they can hit us with another version of the Pelicans game as soon as possible.)

There’s a peddling of hope every year — “Just wait until Joel comes back, and we start to find our rhythm for the second half of the season” — and we can sometimes talk ourselves into embracing that hope, believing that, just maybe, this team can get it done… “It,” of course, being finally breaking through the glass ceiling and appearing in the conference finals, and maybe if the NBA gods were so kind, beating a good team on the way there.

But is there any evidence backing that statement this year? Not really.

We’re in unprecedented territory this year for overall performance for the Sixers. Outside of last season’s disaster, the Sixers have typically been at least in the top third of the league by net rating and have a reasonable argument to being better than their record suggests. This year, the Sixers are 14th in net rating, smack dab in the middle of the NBA (+0.7 net rating) — and it’s not even just one side of the ball that needs to be shored up; they are middle of the pack on both offense (13th) and defense (15th). Since 2017, with Joel at least marginally more available in previous years, the Sixers have only been below 10th once (11th in 2018-19) and never had a net rating below +2.6.

You all see me use net rating a lot in these articles as a measure of team strength, so let’s use this time to back up that characterization and explore the Sixers’ role within it. Since 2000, championship-winning teams have averaged a +7.2 net rating and a 3rd place ranking among all teams in net rating. There are outliers, such as 2010-11 Dallas Mavericks or 2000-01 Los Angeles Lakers, both of whom ranked 8th (yes, the team that beat the Sixers in the Finals had one of the lowest net ratings in the last 25 years… but of course), but the Sixers aren’t even hitting those levels of performance.

Now, the Sixers have had chances in previous years: ranking 4th in 2017-18 (+4.6 net rating) for the original Celtics loss in our first real year of Joel and Ben, 5th in 2020-21 (+5.5) when we lost to the Hawks (in my mind, an even worse series loss than the Raptors in 2018-19 — at least the Raptors were really good), and 3rd in 2022-23 (+4.4) when we lost to the Celtics in seven (also a brutal loss, but the Celtics were the top team in the NBA all year to be fair). This year, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be one of those chances.

However, winning the championship is likely a pipe dream, as we are all aware, and not something we should be talking about after losing to the Pelicans by 15, so let’s shift this to a standard of success we are all much more familiar with: making the conference finals! Surely there’s some hope in just meeting that bare minimum benchmark? Nope.

Since 2000 (which is 25 years and 100 teams), there have only been two exceptions to having +2.0 net rating or better in the conference finals. The first is the 2022-23 Miami Heat (-0.5 net rating), aka. Jimmy Butler’s Linsanity run out of the play-in tournament. The second is the 2017-18 Cleveland Cavaliers (1.0 net rating), aka. Peak LeBron James with one of the craziest carry jobs we’ve seen ever in any playoff run.

We don’t have peak Jimmy Butler. We don’t have peak LeBron. To even hit the outlier outcome of success — 2% of all teams since 2000 from the numbers above — we need the corpse of Embiid to go on an unprecedented tear that will then live on in the annals of NBA history. That’s not a plan, that’s a prayer. The hope cycle only works if the numbers leave room for delusion. This year, they don’t. It’s not happening guys.

If we get to the playoffs at all at this point, we are going to have to play one of Detroit, Boston, New York, or Cleveland (more than likely two if we want to make the conference finals). All would categorize as beating a good team if we were to get a win, but at this point in the season, I’m having a hard time seeing the evidence that we’d truly be able to do so. I will root for it regardless, and when the time comes, I will almost definitely try to talk myself (and potentially you all as readers of this column) into thinking we have a chance.

But floating in the back of my head the whole time will just be the conclusion that this isn’t a contender waiting to wake up. It’s a middle-of-the-pack team hoping for a miracle. And hoping for miracles isn’t a strategy.

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“Ah, a nice, relaxing Sixers game…” I’ll take things that have never been said for $200, Ken.

The Sixers this year have been consistently forced to battle down to the wire, with the quantity and quality of those adventures already evaluated in this column. But one of the biggest reasons they keep finding themselves in cardiac situations is simpler: they are either lighting a perfectly good first-half lead on fire or digging themselves into a hole with disastrous third-quarter play.

The Sixers’ third quarters aren’t just bad. They’re fragile, and they reveal how little margin for error the Sixers have as a team. When the offense stutters for even a few minutes, the entire ecosystem collapses.

The numbers are genuinely stunning. The Sixers have a –18.0 net rating in the third quarter this year. Since the NBA began tracking quarter-level net ratings in 1996, this is the second-worst third-quarter mark ever recorded. The only team worse? The 1997-98 Denver Nuggets, who went 11-71. The rest of the company in that neighborhood isn’t exactly playoff-adjacent either.

And the gap is (almost) as alarming as the ranking. The difference between the Sixers in the third quarter at 30th and the Pacers at 29th (–8.8 net rating) is the same as the difference between the Pacers and the 15th-ranked Blazers. They aren’t just last. They’re in their own universe of bad third-quarter basketball, more than twice as bad as the nearest team.

Monday night against Portland makes for perhaps the cleanest example. They walked into the locker room up 65-64. They walked out and promptly lost the third quarter 49–22, effectively ending the game. (Luckily, the Knicks game didn’t even require a third-quarter collapse: The Sixers were kind enough to handle that by halftime.)

When numbers are this drastic, there’s no one-size-fits-all explanation. This is a catastrophic failure at multiple levels. But one issue stands above the rest: the offense.

In the third quarter, the Sixers are scoring 105.2 points per 100 possessions. That is not only the worst third-quarter offense in the league; it is the worst offensive mark any team has averaged in any single quarter this season.

Most of it comes down to shooting. The Sixers have both the lowest three-point percentage and the lowest two-point percentage of any team in the third quarter. Their effective field goal percentage drops by almost four percentage points compared to the rest of the game — a swing that, if flipped the other way, would put them near the top of the league in efficiency (we can only dream).

If you can’t make shots, it’s going to be hard to score. Riveting analytical analysis, I know.

The confusing part is that there’s no obvious structural shift. They’re taking similar shots. The rotation is nearly identical to the first quarter, where they rank 14th in net rating and look perfectly functional. It’s not fatigue, unless the team has collectively agreed to treat the third quarter as an optional cooldown before ramping back up in the fourth, where they rank sixth in net rating and suddenly remember how to operate again. They are fully capable of playing competent basketball both before and after this nightmarish twelve-minute window.

Other weaknesses don’t spike dramatically. They’re a little worse at offensive rebounding. A little worse at defensive rebounding. A little sloppier with the ball. Free throws dip slightly. All of that matters, but not nearly enough to explain a historically broken offense. The shooting crater is doing the heavy lifting.

So what could it be?

It could be effort — something that would surprise absolutely no one after the last couple of games — where they simply don’t re-enter with the same urgency. It could be halftime adjustments, with opponents taking away their first options and forcing them into Plan C faster than they’re comfortable. It could be rhythm, with starters sitting for 15 real-time minutes, cooling off, and never quite regaining flow. It could even be psychological, with one or two empty trips leading to visible tightness, rushed shots, and possessions that feel heavier than they should in February.

Whatever the exact cocktail of reasons, we now have the equivalent of 18 full games’ worth of third-quarter data. This isn’t a two-week blip. There is clearly something about this stretch of 12 minutes that tanks their efficiency.

Now that’s not to say the defense has helped. The Sixers rank second-to-last in defensive rating in the third quarter as well. They’re fouling much more often here, and, similar to the offense, there is a notable gap in opponents’ shooting in the third quarter to all other times. But the defense is just normal bad, while the offense is structurally broken.

And importantly, bad offense feeds bad defense. Missed shots turn into run-outs. Live-ball turnovers turn into cross-matches. When you’re constantly taking the ball out of your own net or scrambling after transition leaks, it becomes exponentially harder to string together stops. Then you’re attacking against a set defense on the other end, which makes clean looks even harder to generate, and the cycle continues. That’s how a few quick swings turn into a 20-point avalanche.

This is what fragility looks like. Not just missing shots, but missing shots that cascade.

In a strange way, the most impressive part of all this is that the Sixers are still competitive on the whole. To be a functional team while essentially spotting opponents an entire fourth of the game most nights is almost an accomplishment in itself.

But there’s a ceiling to that level of resilience. You can survive rebounding weaknesses. You can survive bench inconsistency. You cannot survive giving away 12 minutes every night. And until the Sixers prove they can stabilize those 12 minutes, every “nice, relaxing Sixers game” will remain firmly in the realm of fiction.

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It feels like they should be better than this.

Almost everything this season for the Sixers has actually been… pretty good? Joel Embiid is playing consistently again and hitting an offensive stride many (myself included) thought we’d never see again. Tyrese Maxey somehow took another leap. VJ Edgecombe is the prince who was promised, both on the court and in the vibes department. Daryl Supreme nailed both two-way signings to fill out the frontcourt depth with Dominick Barlow and Jabari Walker.

Of course, this also made something like the Paul George suspension feel inevitable. As AU so effectively portrayed, you can’t only have good vibes in Sixers land after all. But even accounting for that, the sum of all these wonderful parts ends up feeling like a pretty unsatisfying whole. The Sixers are still a middling team, hovering right on the edge of the play-in. Capable of stringing together wins, sure, but seemingly always fighting uphill to do it.

So why does a team getting so many things right still feel like it’s living possession to possession? There’s no clean, all-encompassing answer, but every explanation eventually touches on the same problem: The Sixers aren’t closing out stops on the defensive glass.

The numbers are blunt. The Sixers rank second-to-last in the NBA in DREB% — how often they actually secure an opponent’s missed shot. When they don’t, it hurts: Those possessions are bleeding 1.16 points per second chance, the ninth-worst mark in the league, and equivalent to handing opponents a 116 offensive rating after every offensive rebound.

NBA tracking data (which has gotten absurdly granular by the way) might provide some background to how this happens, as the Sixers also record the fewest box-outs per game on defensive rebounds. In other words, the team is often watching the ball float through the air and assuming it will fall into their lap. Oh, the other team shot? Well, it must be our turn next! I’ll just stand here and wait.

Now, you don’t need to be a team of Mr. Fundamentals on the glass to rebound well. The Houston Rockets — sixth in the NBA in DREB% and a team that feels synonymous with physicality — actually rank second-to-last in box-outs themselves. The difference isn’t just in technique. It’s also activity.

You can see it immediately on film. In one clip, Sixers players watch the ball descend while Nique Clifford casually grabs it in the middle of three defenders. In another, Houston’s entire lineup is moving toward the ball as Alperen Sengun works to make sure Isaiah Jackson never even gets a look at the rebound. Same sport, wildly different urgency.

Obviously, personnel plays a role here too.

It starts with the guards. Guard rebounding hasn’t been up to standard, and part of that is by design. The fast-paced, transition-heavy style that unlocks Maxey and Edgecombe’s open-floor magic also leaves fewer bodies committed to finishing possessions. The data reflects that tradeoff: VJ Edgecombe and Kelly Oubre Jr. carry the two most negative on/off differentials in offensive rebounding rate allowed, with Maxey not far behind in fourth. Bona sits third (more on him shortly), and there’s a noticeable drop-off after those four.

That overlap isn’t random. Maxey, VJ, and Kelly are three of the team’s most aggressive transition pushers. When all three share the floor together — over 500 minutes so far — the Sixers allow opponents to recover a staggering 37% of their missed shots, nearly seven percentage points worse than when that trio isn’t on the court.

When guards are tasked with offense-first responsibilities, someone has to pay the rebounding tax.

Then there’s the big rotation. Andre Drummond could theoretically be a knight in shining armor — or a 76er in a Blue Coat, I guess — but his role has nearly vanished. With the team prioritizing Bona’s development, Drummond has received 11 DNPs in the last 16 games where both Joel and Bona were available, and has logged under four total minutes across the last nine.

For all of Mike’s (fair!) frustration with Drummond’s lack of contested rebounds last year, the results are undeniable. He leads the team in fgDR%, securing 26% of all available defensive rebounds while on the floor, good for the 96th percentile among bigs and sixth best in the entire league. Compare that to Bona’s rough 12% (11th percentile) — it’s much harder to defensive rebound effectively when you’re chasing blocks as often as Bona is — and it’s easy to see how a modest shift in minutes could change the math.

Embiid, often the target of fans’ ire on the defensive glass, has actually been just fine here this year, with a solid but unspectacular 16% fgDR% (42nd percentile among bigs), and the team rebounds at the exact same level with him on and off the floor. However, that’s not to say he is blameless in this rebounding epidemic, as this middling defensive rebounding rate is the worst of his career by far. Embiid had previously excelled here, ranking above the 88th percentile on the defensive glass for seven straight seasons, before starting to fall off last year with his injuries.

Dominick Barlow has been another part of the equation. His effort on the offensive glass is undeniable — he grabbed TEN offensive boards last night against the Clippers — but that hasn’t translated defensively. He’s ending possessions at just over an 11% fgDR%, placing him in the 8th percentile among bigs.

None of this means the Sixers need to become an elite rebounding team overnight. They don’t need to turn into the 2004 Pistons. They just need this to stop being such a liability.

That’s where the trade deadline inevitably enters the conversation. If there’s a move to be made, getting help on the glass — especially from the wing, with Paul George newly sidelined — could quietly raise the team’s floor. Someone like Pat Connaughton, who has fallen out of the rotation in Charlotte but has been an excellent defensive rebounding wing for most of his career and can space the floor offensively, could help without breaking anything else. Naji Marshall fits a similar mold, though he likely costs too much. Cheaper options like Dalen Terry or Devin Carter offer rebounding plus playmaking utility. All of this does feel fairly unlikely from a contract standpoint given the looming tax duck — and knowing the Sixers, we’d likely spring another leak depending on which rotation piece we trade away in the process — but a man can dream.

Still, the path is clear. The Sixers are already doing enough good things to matter, and they have shown themselves capable of the effort needed on the glass through their surprising offensive rebounding success. Turn it around, and maybe the good vibes of this season can turn into consistent success, or who knows, maybe even beating a good team in the playoffs.

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Jared McCain’s recent assignment to the Delaware Blue Coats (a much better name than the 87ers for the record) feels like a moment of reckoning — especially for those, like Spike, who see McCain as a core piece of this team going forward. On the surface, it reads like a demotion. However, I’d prefer to view it as a useful checkpoint for understanding what has actually changed in his game.

The timing is helpful, as McCain has played 522 minutes so far this season — almost identical to the 504-minute takeover stretch he had last year from November 8 through December 4, and not far off his total workload as a rookie (594 minutes). That symmetry gives us a clean comparison point. At this point, it’s clearly not just an extended cold streak. It feels like something is fundamentally off, and the data provides a fair way to test that instinct.

Let’s start with what jumps off the page: the shooting has been bad.

His eFG% (weighted 2’s and 3’s) has gone from 56% last year — good for 79th percentile among combo guards — to just 44%, which is a brutal 2nd percentile. In particular, his 2-pt efficiency has been abysmal, making under 38% inside the arc. For reference, he shot better than that from three last season! While volatility is normal for young guards, this magnitude of difference has been alarming. Whether the cause of this is rhythm, lingering effects from injury, Nick Nurse rotations, or a combination of factors is hard to pin down, but the efficiency has seen a major hit.

He’s also not getting to the line. McCain is being fouled on his shots roughly half as often as he was last year, which compounds the efficiency drop and removes one of the easier ways for a scorer to stabilize production when the jumper isn’t falling.

To be clear, the signal isn’t all negative. The Sixers have been +2.9 points per 100 possessions better with McCain on the floor this season. That’s real value. There are plenty of possible reasons for that signal: the threat of his three alone could provide spacing, his willingness to keep the offense flowing could get better looks for teammates, or it could even be just a misleading small sample size. But when you compare it to last year’s +4.6 mark, it becomes easier to understand why concern has crept in. Even if he is still helping, he’s not bending games the way he briefly did before.

However, those are all fairly obvious points you can pick up just by watching with your own eyes. So what’s changed beneath the surface? The biggest difference is usage.

McCain’s breakout stretch last season coincided perfectly with Tyrese Maxey missing six games and Joel Embiid appearing in only four of those 13 contests. With the offense suddenly stripped down, McCain’s role expanded overnight. His usage spiked early and never really came back down, even after Maxey returned. During that stretch, he posted a 26% usage rate (77th percentile), while this season, that number sits at just 17 % (18th percentile). A shift in game responsibility of that magnitude is sure to have an impact on a player’s approach.

That context matters, but it doesn’t tell the full story. The real separator is how McCain performs with Maxey on versus off the floor.

Jared McCain’s performance in key areas with and without Tyrese Maxey in the 2024-25 season (left) and the 2025-26 season (right).

When you compare his per-75-possession numbers across seasons, one thing becomes clear quickly: McCain alongside Maxey looks largely the same as it did last year. His on-ball usage is similar. His playmaking is similar. His free-throw rate hasn’t meaningfully changed. He’s taking a few more midrange shots — something that stands out on film — but not enough to fundamentally reshape his profile. The efficiency drop is significant, with his true shooting percentage down nearly 10 points, but that decline shows up everywhere and lines up with the “obvious stuff” we already covered.

The real shift happens when Maxey sits.

Last season, those minutes belonged to McCain. The usage, scoring, playmaking, and free throw volume all exploded, and somehow, his efficiency followed. Those 343 minutes were the high-end Jared McCain experience — the version that pops in your head from a YouTube highlight reel set to the tune of “Enter Sandman” (no, there’s no reason I chose that song in particular, why do you ask?).

This year, that version hasn’t shown up in the same way. His playmaking still ticks up without Maxey, but nearly everything else takes a step back. He’s not commanding possessions, drawing fouls, or tilting the floor from beyond the arc like he did during that stretch. In these runs, McCain is asked to function as the primary organizer rather than a high-usage scorer, and without the same freedom to dominate possessions in the way that fueled last year’s run, he’s been unable to find his balance.

There are plenty of reasons this could be happening. Embiid and Paul George are available more often, and VJ Edgecombe has emerged out of thin air as someone who needs touches. McCain missed training camp and is still working back from injury. Or he’s a small guard, and the league has figured out how best to capitalize. All of these could be clear and logical explanations for a dip in production, though they also highlight how different his role (and margin for error) has become on a healthier, deeper Sixers squad.

So what does it all mean? I’m not here to take a principled stand on whether Jared McCain is a future star (though I do believe there is an impactful NBA player hidden away somewhere in his 6’3” frame). Belief in him ultimately comes down to how you interpret those 343 minutes from last season. Were they a glimpse of hidden upside, temporarily unlocked by circumstance but very real? Or were they a rookie-year Linsanity run that only works in short bursts on a stripped-down roster?

What is clear is that the combination of that hot stretch and the Sixers being surprisingly competitive this season has accelerated expectations. McCain hasn’t met them yet, but that doesn’t mean they were misguided in the first place. He’s played just over 1,000 minutes in his NBA career and just 54 games in non-garbage time; it’s still incredible early in his career to be making a concrete judgment about what he can or can’t be. So, this Blue Coats stint isn’t necessarily a verdict. It’s a pause — and maybe a needed reset for both us as fans and McCain as a player — before we find out which version of Jared McCain is closer to the truth. Only time will tell.

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Throughout this season, there has been trade chatter about getting off the Joel Embiid and Paul George contracts, most notably on the last pod where Spike and Mike discussed whether they would accept a Trae Young-like salary dump.

Well, we were just provided the ideal case study to evaluate what the team would look like without them. The Sixers played the Toronto Raptors on back-to-back nights, with the only big change between games coming from the addition of Joel and PG back into the lineup. The outcome? A 29-point halftime lead that ended in a comfortable win and a performance in direct contrast to what we saw the night before. These two games show exactly what the Sixers would lose if they moved on from Joel and PG.

To get out ahead of it, a lot of that difference is due to the Sixers shooting a gazillion percent from everywhere in game two (the Sixers’ 68.45% true shooting on Monday was the highest in a game this season) — it’s not hard to look better when the shots are falling.

But it’s not just that; these are impactful players when available. Joel is playing like prime Boogie Cousins and Paul George has settled in as an (admittedly overpaid) third or even fourth option, where his off-ball capabilities and IQ can excel. They are making a difference on the court, and the numbers bear that out.

Maxey on his own has been very impressive, carrying the team to a +2.5 net rating (point differential per 100 possessions) without either of Joel or PG on the floor — that’s not contender-level dominance, but it’s pretty good. We have been begging for even net-neutral minutes when Joel sits for years, and we have finally gotten it through Maxey’s evolution. Maxey has also had to do this while bearing an incredible load, with 731 minutes holding up the offense without his costars, equivalent to over 15 full NBA games.

Now an intuitive reader like yourself might look at those numbers and say: “Beckett, you’re clearly contradicting your title. This just shows Maxey is perfectly capable of carrying lineups on his own, so we don’t need to deal with Joel and PG at all anymore!”

However, even if you believe Maxey should be the clear first-option star — which I do in fact agree with — the additional elevation Joel and PG provide to Maxey’s minutes on and most notably off the floor provide unbelievable value.

Even with VJ Edgecombe’s unbelievable start to the year, take Maxey off the floor without replacing that production and the Sixers have collapsed. This is where the Raptors games become revealing. In Sunday’s loss, the Sixers won Maxey’s 45 minutes by 17 and lost the 8 minutes he sat by 18, a difference that would make even 2019-Raptors-series Greg Monroe proud. Even an overhead view of the full season sees them falling to a -12.7 net rating without any of the top three, solidly worse than the league-bottom Washington Wizards (who are REALLY bad by the way, on par with the Process Sixers).

However, add in Joel and PG to share the load and suddenly they can survive without Maxey just fine. In Monday’s win, the Sixers won Maxey’s 35 minutes by +13 and lost the 13 minutes he was off the floor by… zero!

The macro scale numbers once again back this up. Joel and PG shared minutes without Maxey have had an elite +16.2 net rating, though admittedly in a limited 62 minutes. Add in the more robust and meaningful sample (229 minutes) of Joel and PG sharing minutes with Maxey, and we see a strong +7.1 net rating, on par with the NBA’s third-best Boston Celtics (who have been annoyingly good).

This shows up not just in scoring, but in how the offense functions. Let’s take a more applied look at how through a film lens. Compare these two screen grabs of Maxey drives from Sunday’s loss (top) and Monday’s win (bottom):

The shell of the defense is unbelievably more spread out in the second frame with the biggest change simply being the addition of Paul George into the strong-side corner instead of Barlow. There is a clear difference in the spacing afforded to Maxey when Nurse is forced to rely on less-consistent shooters. He has to both shoot more and work harder for his shots, all while getting the full attention of the opposing defense. Add in Joel and PG, and all of a sudden there are other threats to account for, which helps open up their offense.

Joel in particular makes an impact here. The Sixers are dead-last in the NBA in assists per 100 possessions at 24.1, but add in Joel and that number goes up. The team improves to 25.7 assists per 100 possessions with Joel on the floor (which would be 17th in the NBA) and a rough 23.6 with him off. The ability to put the opposing team into rotation with his gravity helps get the ball moving effectively and lets Maxey shine more off-ball, where he is the most effective.

This also isn’t all about Maxey. VJ has been awesome, but he is not yet built to be the No. 2 on a contending-level team, and his usage skyrockets without Joel and PG on the floor. The most recent example is in these Raptors games. In Sunday’s loss he was inefficient, scoring 17 points on 6-19 shooting with a high 23.6% usage rate. In Monday’s win he was far better, scoring 15 points on 5-7 shooting with just a 12.7% usage rate.

A lot of this difference in efficiency is due to the types of shots he gets. Even if VJ’s pull-up scoring is ahead of schedule, these shots are still far more inefficient than when he gets set up (43.5% eFG off the dribble versus 59.8% eFG on catch and shoot). When he is pushed into a bigger role, he is forced into a ton of these shots, as 15 of his 19 attempts in Sunday’s loss were self-created, compared to just 3 of his 7 in Monday’s win. That role adjustment has ripple effects down the whole roster, shifting players into positions where they can excel.

All that to say, as much as it is scary to rely on players as aging and injury-prone as Joel and PG, they are needed if our goal is still to compete at the highest level. A trade for more available pieces likely gives a more stable floor at the cost of the ceiling, and a salary dump is out of the question. Long-term, the Maxey and VJ backcourt is the future, but for now we need to enjoy the old guys still having a legitimately positive impact. Because if the Sixers still want a championship-caliber ceiling, moving on from Joel and PG isn’t a necessary step forward — it’s a crippling step backward.

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Beckett Sanderson is a new columnist for the Ricky. You’ll hear more from him and learn more of what he’s about shortly, but for now everyone just say hi to Beckett and read his first of no doubt many columns about the Sixers taking years off our collective lives.

I don’t know how many more of these my heart can handle. Even with the Nuggets loss on Monday, the Sixers are off to a 19–15 start that has exceeded most of our preseason expectations. But if you feel like these wins (and a handful of losses) have been causing an abnormal amount of stress, even by Philly standards, you’d be right.

Of the team’s 34 games to start the season, 23 of them have come down to the clutch (defined by the NBA as the last 5 minutes of the 4th quarter/OT with the margin of ≤5), second only to the Mavericks. The Sixers have also had 10 games decided by three points or fewer and another five games that have gone to overtime — both the highest in the league. Someone needs to check on Mike’s FitBit.

Despite making for a highly distressing viewing experience, the Sixers have actually been effective in these clutch situations, posting a 13-10 record so far. They have a net rating (point differential per 100 possessions) of +13.7 in clutch minutes, seventh-best in the league, and a night-and-day difference compared to their overall net rating of +0.9. If they could only play like this before the last five minutes, they’d have a record on par with the Oklahoma City Thunder (+13.3).

So how are they doing it? The answer is not MVP candidate Tyrese Maxey, ex-MVP Joel Embiid, or the, uh, Eagles parade-inspired Paul George. It’s rookie VJ Edgecombe, just 30 games into his career.

Of course, even in a broader context, VJ has been a positive presence. The Sixers are +3.4 per 100 possessions with him on the floor this season, and they’ve notably held their own even in the VJ minutes when Maxey sits (+1.4) — uncommon stability for a rookie to provide without his co-star. However, it’s late in games where Edgecombe’s impact has exploded.

In high-leverage situations, the Sixers have posted a staggering +33.7 net rating across VJ’s 84 minutes on the floor. That number comes with the usual small-sample caveats, but it illustrates just how extreme his impact has been. For perspective, the 2015-16 Warriors finished their 73-9 season with a net rating of +10.7 overall.

This isn’t VJ simply benefiting from those around him; he’s actively driving their success. Among players with at least 15 clutch attempts, he ranks second in the entire NBA in effective field goal percentage (73.5%), trailing only Anthony Edwards. Built into that number is a ridiculous 58.8% shooting from three, a stunning proposition for a player who entered the league with questions about whether he could consistently shoot at all (though it’s unlikely he will continue to be this good). Add in his defensive impact—VJ leads the Sixers in both steals AND blocks in the clutch — and you have a player who could arguably be a candidate for clutch player of the year.

For a rookie to play heavy clutch minutes and thrive on both ends of the floor is rare in any context. For the Sixers, it’s been the difference between surviving many of these stress-inducing games and losing far more of them.

However, while watching VJ take over games late has been entertaining, this volume of close matchups isn’t harmless. With each fourth quarter turning into a high-leverage situation, Maxey and VJ’s minutes have continued to climb. Maxey is still far and away the league leader in minutes per game, and VJ is not far behind at 6th, playing the most minutes per game (35.8) for a rookie since Andrew Wiggins in 2014-15. When the score is tight in almost every game, Nurse has little choice but to ride his best players, but it adds unavoidable risk given the wear and tear of today’s NBA.

History suggests clutch success is fragile. Winning close games is valuable, but relying on them as a nightly survival strategy isn’t a sustainable formula for either long-term success or player health.

Monday night’s game against a skeleton Nuggets squad was a perfect example of the problem. That matchup should have been over by midway through the 3rd quarter to provide some old-fashioned load management. Instead, Maxey played 46 minutes, VJ played 42, and Joel hit a season-high 40 minutes against a team missing all five of its starters. Even beyond the minutes load, the clear fatigue they were feeling — especially VJ, who had to take off a possession or two in the corner in OT — may have been the difference between a win and a loss.

VJ Edgecombe has given them a remarkable safety net late, but if this start is going to hold over the course of a long season, they need to stop relying on it.

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