The Sixers Are Boring and Mediocre
MOC tells it like it is about the profoundly unspectacular Sixers.
Over the past 11 years, dating back to the start of The Process, watching the Sixers has made me feel many things. Fascinated. Confused. Excited. Despondent. But there’s one thing they’ve never made me feel until now: bored.
This is simply an extremely uninteresting basketball team. We are now nearly halfway through the season, and I feel I can safely say that no matter who is playing on any given night, the 2024-25 Sixers are a mediocre and exceedingly boring squad to watch.
An optimist would point out that we have not yet seen this team play to its full potential, and I would agree – I can honestly only think of 3-4 games this entire season in which they played well from start to finish. But at this point I no longer believe in their ability to achieve any sort of consistency and be a team that reaches its ceiling on even a semi-regular basis.
A lot of past Sixers teams have shown far more promise than this year’s group, and still have turned out to be massively fraudulent. Even the 2019-20 Sixers, who were perhaps the most joyless team that I ever watched, would dish out a good ass-kicking against a solid team at least once every week or two to stop people from extinguishing all hope in them. The fact that this team can offer nothing of the sort to delude us into believing in them says a lot in and of itself.
Even as they’ve steadied the ship over the past 14 games with a record of 9-5, they still only have a net rating of +0.8 in that stretch – they are playing way above their head in terms of point differential, and while they’ve gained some ground in the standings, it just hasn’t felt like a very convincing turnaround.
There are a lot of things you could blame for this, but the biggest one is that their three best players – Maxey, George, and Embiid – are all playing considerably below the level that they each did just one season ago. George and Maxey putting up true shooting percentages of 53 and 55 percent respectively can perhaps tell the entire story right there. If neither guy can turn their season around, major discussions need to be had about what Maxey can do to get his efficiency back up, and whether the George contract should be viewed as a major albatross moving forward.
They’ve also gotten extremely poor, statistically anomalous 3-point shooting from their role players, namely Kelly Oubre and Eric Gordon. Andre Drummond and Kyle Lowry have also disappointed relative to what was expected of them. But still — despite all of that, it shouldn’t be this bad.
They are currently the 25th ranked offense in the league — a totally inexcusable outcome at this point in the year. And here’s where it gets really weird: the Sixers’ offense is 4.8 points per 100 possessions worse when Joel Embiid is on the floor. Even at full strength, with their best player on the floor, this team cannot achieve baseline competency on offense. I think it would be much easier to believe in this team if the math behind their terrible offense was as simple as the fact that they cannot function when Embiid is off the floor, but this season is clearly not that cut and dry. They have significant offensive issues even when the big fella is present.
I chalk a lot of that up to the fact that they play a disorganized, purposeless brand of offense regardless of who is on the floor on any given night. Nick Nurse’s lack of ingenuity on that end of the floor has been a horrible fit for this group. They are desperate for some offensive structure and Nurse refuses to offer any. Nearly every possession on offense for the Sixers involves an extremely basic action to get one of their stars the ball, followed by an isolation or pick and roll for that player. It’s repetitive, exhausting, and ineffective. If things continue along this path, Nurse should, in my opinion, be on the hot seat this summer
On top of that, the team feels like they lack any sort of personality or swagger, which is not something I had fully braced for coming into the year. Jared McCain’s energy is sorely missed – Guerschon Yabusele is the only guy on the team who cracks a smile at this point. I haven’t been a fan at all of Tyrese Maxey’s angry, always-complaining-about-something demeanor this year. Kelly Oubre Jr. has been a bit more tame in terms of his persona compared to last year. Paul George’s energy is totally flat on a nightly basis. Embiid looks even more unenthused than years past; he rarely looks like he’s having fun anymore. This is not exactly a group that is going to inspire a future generation’s love for basketball.
I dunno, man. There’s just nothing to grab onto for hope or excitement at this point. This team just feels destined to be the next in line of many highly talented teams that never quite put it together. Sometimes these teams turn it around and make a run out of nowhere – nobody would have foreseen the 2021-22 Celtics becoming a juggernaut in the second half of the season, or the 2022-23 Heat flipping the switch when the playoffs started. But more often than not, teams that show you they’re mediocre and boring continue to be mediocre and boring.
Mike O’Connor is the best O’Connor in basketball writing. Previously of The Athletic, you can find Mike on Twitter @MOConnor_NBA. Mike’s writing is brought to you by Body Bio, supplements based on science, focusing on your gut and brain health.
Does the NBA/NBA players this year seem to lack joy more broadly? Are the long seasons, international tournaments, constant pressure to make finals and win championships (being a solid playoff team is typically not enough for fans) crushing the spirits of the NBA players? Who outside of Curry do we think about being a joyous player. Maxey seemed to be joyful a couple of years ago but it seems like the pressure has impacted his spark.
At this point it shouldn’t be difficult to say Nurse should be fired. He’s not the right coach for this roster. He needs to go.