What the Hell Is Going On With Dominick Barlow and Paul George?
AU on two guys reminding us always "IF the Sixers get healthy," not "when."
It was remarkable how freeing that 4-0 start felt from the ghosts of Sixers past. Racing up and down the court, with athleticism to spare. Shooting from all over the place, with guards on guards on guards on guards. Beating the Celtics in Boston on opening night. Pulling so many comeback wins and clutch wins out of their collective asses that you would think they all had a Kyle Lowry amount of extra room back there. Sure, it’s been a rollercoaster with Joel and the defense has been fashionably late in general, but for those of us who worried about 2025-26 being 2024-25 Deluxe Edition, it had been an extremely satisfying departure.
Well, now we’re back. Not totally of course — hell, we could lose out through November and still start December with more wins than we had at that point last year. But things are starting to feel a little more familiar. We’ve lost three games out of four, including a Cup Game to the C’s and a classic Sixers back to back of one game we should have won and another where we were basically drawing dead from the opening tip. And now we’ve got the curious case of Dominick Barlow and Paul George, with their mysterious injuries and ambiguous return-to-play timetables. Now we’re really getting Sixersy.
Paul George’s injury stuff maybe isn’t as perplexing as it is just frustrating, though I still don’t think we really even know what he originally did during his summertime workout that required him to get arthroscopic knee surgery months before preseason even started. Certainly we thought he’d be back by now — or at least that we’d be able to pencil in an expected return date somewhere on our calendars. But despite PG practicing with the team and engaging in high-stakes shooting contests with Jared McCain, Mike’s continued predictions that every next game will be the game of his imminent return have thusfar gone invalidated.
Indeed, the team has already announced that Paul will be out for both games of this weekend’s back-to-back while doctors meet with him to determine if “the last hurdle” has been cleared in his progress. From there, it will no doubt only be a matter of weeks until we get word that his ramping up will enter Phase Two, and if he still feels good at that point, maybe we’ll even get a vague suggestion of him eyeing a potential return to the lineup before the New Year.
Anyway, as vexing as that tortoise crawl back to active duty may be, it’s got nothing on the Dominick Barlow situation. Barlow played just enough in his one and a half healthy games to start the season to become a new fan favorite — and by that I mean I tweeted one thing about how much I appreciated that he clearly didn’t give a fuck about being totally ignored in the Sixers’ half-court offense — before hitting the locker room early against Charlotte with an “elbow contusion.” Bummer about him missing the rest of the game when he’d been playing well, we all agreed, but “elbow contusion” sounded not particularly tragic; surely he’d be back for the next game against Orlando, or at absolute worst the game after that against Washington.
Fast forward five games and Barlow’s contusion appears to be spreading like greyscale. He still hasn’t played a second, he’s also been ruled out for both games this weekend, and he showed up at practice on Friday with a bandage covering most of his arm, big enough that you wonder if Kelly Oubre Jr. went around bothering Sixers assistant coaches for a marker so he could sign it with a funny message. He’s getting looked at on Monday, but nobody seems to know or want to predict how big a deal this injury actually is at this point. Nick Nurse certainly seems baffled.
I don’t want to give our guys undue shit for being hurt and wanting to be careful with their bodies. I got a mild case of the flu this week and I’m already wondering if I should call my mother and downgrade my status for Thanksgiving to “probable”; I’m certainly the last person to credibly yell at anyone to rub some dirt on it and get back out there already. It’s not them we’re really exasperated with, it’s history — the Sixers culture of the last decade that somehow led George Hill to miss months of post-trade deadline action with a jammed thumb, that held Robert Covington out so long with ailing knees during his Sixers comeback that eventually we just kinda stopped asking about him atlogether, that nearly fucking killed Zhaire Smith as he needed months to rehab a deadly sesame attack. And now apparently McCain is still saddled with a leg brace that he’s “hopeful he won’t have to wear all year”? It’s infuriating how right it all feels.
5-3 is still a great start for this team through eight games. Even with everything that’s gone wrong (or merely declined to start going right), we’re blessed to be where we are with our surfeit of young exciting guards, a Kelly Oubre who damn near deserves to be in the MVP discussion and a Joel Embiid that’s still playing more games than he’s sitting. But these forever-lagging injuries just remind us that as long as we’re following them, we’ll never totally outrun the Sixers being the Sixers. No matter where we go, there they are.
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.