This Is When Things Get Dangerous
AU on the Sixers' season already starting to feel on-the-brinky.
Even through most of the third quarter on Tuesday night, I still thought the Sixers had a chance to come back. After a cold shooting start, the Paolo Banchero-less Orlando Magic had gotten scorching from the field, on their way to a 51-point second quarter and a 26-point lead over the Sixers that seemed wildly unsustainable to me. The Sixers (and their opponents) had run hot and cold throughout games all year, and things had a tendency to even out by the end. And “unsustainable” was right — the Sixers were never able to keep it that close again, as the Magic rocked them for another 35 in the third. When Tristan da Silva and Franz Wagner hit back-to-back threes to push the 33-point lead to 39, I officially gave up hope for any even-Stevening in the fourth.
After a feel-good 4-0 kickoff to the season, the Sixers have started to lose a bunch — not like a lot, not like last year (yet), but enough to be conspicuous — but they hadn’t really lost like this. The losses had been close, explicable. They’d come shorthanded, on the wrong end of a back-to-back, against good teams, surging teams. Which isn’t to say the Magic are bad at 11-8, but they’re certainly not run-you-off-the-floor-and-into-the-Schuylkill good, especially not without their best player, and especially-especially with another starter getting ejected in the second for tough-guying Andre Drummond. And yes, the Sixers were also shorthanded on Tuesday — and increasingly so — but that was feeling less like a temporary excuse and more like the not-so-new normal.
For the first time this year, the Sixers let go of the rope. And the way things are going, it might be pretty far from the last time.
To this point, the Sixers’ injury situation has been rough but also roughly tenable. Guys had been sidelined, but guys had been matriculating back at the same time, and we’d had enough of a healthy core of playable guys around our in-and-outers that it always felt like we were putting a real, competitive team on the court regardless. But that core has been shrinking, first with the left knee LCL sprain to Kelly Oubre Jr. — somehow the model of two-way professionalism and consistency through the season’s first 12 games — and now with whatever’s going on with V.J. Edgecombe’s calf tightness, which the team has now kept him out of two games for as a “precautionary” measure.
Now, Tyrese Maxey is showing up a lot of nights to find out a lot of people who initially answered “yes” on the Facebook invite have downgraded to a “maybe” or “no.” For Tuesday’s game, Joel Embiid had ramped up from Out to Probable to Questionable but still ultimately ended up back at Out, where he was joined by Paul George, who’d made it all the way to “Probable” before feeling that dreaded soreness in his ankles. Things went from bad to cartoonish in the second quarter when Trendon Watford, one of the team’s precious few non-Embiid frontcourt players who Maxey has developed any real on-court chemistry with, collapsed mid-drive with a non-contact injury (later revealed to be a left adductor strain) and immediately headed right to the locker room. Tyrese probably spent a good few seconds wondering if anyone would notice if he just left to join Trendon there.
I keep referring to Tyrese because he’s been the one thing holding this entire operation together, the reason why the number on the left in our win-loss record is still (very slightly) higher than the one on the right. He’s been a quintessential good soldier, dragging the team over the finish line — and sometimes right up to the finish line before the team just gets too heavy and he collapses — but always carrying that weight, boy. But Tuesday was the first time it felt like he maybe just let go. The shot wasn’t falling, he stopped getting calls, he had a bad turnover to end the second and it felt like he sorta stopped attacking in the third. If there was a game to give your back and shoulders a break, it was definitely this one, but doing so can be habit-forming, even for a player and a human being as solid as Tyrese Maxey. It certainly was last season.
At the risk of sounding like I’m talking through a Bane gas mask, it feels like we’re getting to a point of wondering what will break first, Tyrese’s spirit or his body. The latter certainly seems a strong contender, as his league-high minutes load (even in last night’s laugher, he logged 32, which at least dropped him under a 40 average for the season) and similarly weighty offensive responsibility level looks to be taking its toll. Against Miami, he played through a shoulder sprain, against Orlando, there was definitely some leg-favoring going on in the third. It’s understandable, and Tyrese himself isn’t making excuses, but keep adding straws at this rate and that camel’s back is gonna break.
And if Tyese goes down — for any amount of time, really — the entire season is sure to follow. It’s becoming abundantly clear that help is not really on the way with this team, or of it is, it’s perpetually both on the way in and on the way out. We’ll see Paul and Joel when and for as long as we see them, but they’re special guest stars at this point, not regular cast. Edgecombe and Quentin Grimes are supporting characters. Jared McCain looks on his way to at least providing Tyrese some credible in-episode relief, but he’s still very far from being a replacement lead. It’s Tyrese smiling that big smile for the camera, or it’s back to the 2024-25 season again.
It might be back there soon anyway. The Sixers’ tightrope act had still kept them comfortably above .500 for the season to this point, but now they’re just one game over, at 9-8— and fair or not, it feels like once their heads slip underwater, they’re not coming back up for air again. Suddenly, this upcoming three-game stretch against the Nets, the Hawks who just lost to the Wizards, and then the Wizards themselves, feels extremely crucial for the Sixers to get some breathing room, before a much-harder three-game run against the Warriors, Bucks and Lakers threatens to leave them submerged. Can we get some lineup relief, however temporary? Can Daryl make an emergency move? Do Coach Lowry’s legs still work? Whatever the answer is, we better figure it out by Thanksgiving. Ropes are scratchy and uncomfortable, and letting go is easy and freeing.
Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the ‘If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders’ section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.