Welcome to questions season.
While the NBA’s bottom 10 squads play out the string this week, the league’s playoff and Play-In teams are gearing up for their final exams. This is the part of the program where all the questions about teams that had been bubbling up during the course of the regular season get answered … in many cases with unflattering responses.
While some of those questions are relatively uninteresting in the grand scheme of things, we also get into some huge ones with league-wide implications. And none are bigger than the existential tests that potential contenders with superstar players face.
Enter the Philadelphia 76ers (44-35). Languishing in seventh place in the Eastern Conference after losing reigning MVP Joel Embiid for half the season, the Sixers might be in the weirdest place of any team in the league right now.
On the one hand, Philly has Embiid plus another All-Star in Tyrese Maxey and max cap room coming online this summer. Embiid is back in the lineup, and the team is 28-7 when he and Maxey both play, with a plus-12.4 scoring margin in their minutes. The ingredients are there to follow a deep playoff run behind those two with an even better squad next year.
On the other hand, that endgame requires threading a pretty fine needle, starting with using cap space to get a big star when stars of that ilk rarely change teams via free agency anymore. And in the meantime, there’s the little matter of Philly being the seventh seed in the East entering Tuesday’s games. It is theoretically possible the Sixers could only play two postseason games and then head into summer. Stack that up with a bear free-agent market, and it’s not hard to see how the dominoes could fall into an unhappy superstar.
Of course, the Sixers are in this spot mostly because that same superstar wasn’t available for half the year. Embiid’s injury is a bummer not just because of how it impacted Philly’s seeding, but he was also having a season for the ages, posting a mind-boggling 34.1 PER in the 37 games he’s played, a mark that would have shattered the season record had he played enough minutes. Embiid’s insane 39.8 usage came with elite efficiency (64.4 percent true shooting) and enough dimes to rank third among centers in assist rate; per 100 possessions, he averaged more assists than Stephen Curry or De’Aaron Fox.
The good news for the Sixers is Embiid is back. The bad news is he’s not back, if you know what I mean, having played only three games since returning from a two-month absence. Watching him from courtside against the remnants of what used to be the Memphis Grizzlies on Saturday, he was able to dominate the game while reading the paper, finishing with 30 points and 12 rebounds in just 23 minutes against overmatched G Leaguers. But he had eight turnovers and seemed to be openly shaking off rust at times and seemed even more dependent on jump shooting than he’d been pre-injury.
Additionally, at the defensive end, Embiid was definitely in cardio mode. The Sixers kept him in a nice, comfortable deep drop against an unthreatening opponent and he survived the night, but next week will be very different. Embiid also stopped at several points to take stock of himself and his braced left knee.
Meanwhile, Philly has won five in a row, including a dramatic overtime win without Embiid on Sunday in San Antonio, but the Sixers still face an uphill battle for playoff seeding. Because they lose tiebreaks with both the Indiana Pacers and Miami Heat, Philly needs to win its final three games (layups at home against the Brooklyn Nets and Detroit Pistons sandwiching a legit battle with the Orlando Magic) and hope the Heat drop one just to have home-court advantage for a difficult Play-In game for the seventh seed. Catching Indiana for sixth would require the Pacers to lose at least two of their final three, one of which is against the Raptors.
Winning that 7-8 game suddenly puts the Sixers in a situation that perhaps isn’t so bad. Avoiding the Boston Celtics’ half of the bracket is paramount, but a first-round matchup against reeling Milwaukee or Cleveland feels manageable; it could also be New York or Orlando(!). With every East team except the Celtics having lost at least 31 games, the parallels to last season’s West are obvious; can Philly be this year’s Lakers?
Winning playoff rounds would provide some proof of concept for the vision in Philly, especially if the Sixers could go on a run that included a competitive conference finals versus the same Celtics team that beat them in seven games last spring. But even if their postseason is a quicker affair, we still get into the puzzle of the offseason. Remember, regardless of how things go this spring, the Sixers roster is set for major turnover, with Embiid the only player with guaranteed money on the books for next season. (Backup center Paul Reed also has a non-guaranteed $7.7 million deal for next year.)
Thus, the Sixers could walk into July 1 with $66 million in cap room, more than enough for a max contract. That’s great, but what might be the endgame for all that cap space in Philly? Everyone in the league is whispering about a max offer for Paul George, but if he stays put in Los Angeles, the market for elite wings peters out quickly. And running it back with the same team scarcely seems like an option, especially since Maxey’s low cap hold offers a use-it-or-lose-it chance to act on cap room this summer.
The Sixers also could trade into their cap space, of course, and possibly use the picks they got from the Clippers in the James Harden trade as bait to sweeten a deal. However, that still requires an elite player to be available at the right moment on the Sixers’ offseason timeline. One of the fascinating parlor games in league circles is assessing what, exactly, the Sixers could do in early July if they can’t lure George, given their need to burn through their room this summer before presumably inking a max extension for Maxey.
There are hybrid options, too, such as re-signing Buddy Hield and De’Anthony Melton while also adding a big-dollar free agent. Philly considers itself in a position of strength given the incoming luxury tax restrictions that will crimp spending, but few contenders have ever had to put their entire roster together at once the way Philly might need to this summer. Leveraging that advantage in a way that fits an Embiid-Maxey core is still a lift.
Regardless, watching Embiid this past weekend was a reminder of the fascinating three months ahead in the City of Brotherly Love. Embiid was the best player in the league when healthy this season, but he’s had trouble replicating those performances in the postseason and is not in peak condition this time. Meanwhile, just over the horizon lies a potentially massive roster overhaul that has the upside to vault Philly into a much higher strata of contention … and the downside to accelerate the beginning of the end.
Get your popcorn ready.
Travel Geekery: Three-day weekend
I watched Philadelphia play in Memphis on Saturday as the undercard to Marc Gasol’s jersey retirement, but along the way to and from Grind City, I also saw the Grizzlies play the Pistons and the Rockets play Dallas. Some notes:
Brandon Clarke missed significant time with an Achilles injury. (Petre Thomas / USA Today)
• Memphis doesn’t have much to talk about at present, as virtually every important player for next season is injured. However, Brandon Clarke played on Saturday and looked good. An undersized five dependent on athleticism, his torn Achilles represented a worrisome development for his playing future, but Clarke showed his usual athletic pop off the floor against Philly, even skying for an alley-oop dunk after a seemingly wayward pass.
Otherwise, the Grizzlies are in a holding pattern ahead of a big offseason. Even when healthy, the team disappointed, and they have to find the right alchemy again around the core of Ja Morant, Desmond Bane and Jaren Jackson Jr. It still seems from all indications like Marcus Smart is part of that equation. Luke Kennard, Ziaire Williams and Jake LaRavia? Maybe not so much.
• Detroit: On Friday, I saw the Pistons play one of the most half-hearted games you’ll see all season, even by their standards. Facing a threadbare Memphis roster with zero real rotation players, Detroit somehow managed to fall behind by 27 en route to a 109-90 defeat … even with two of their recent lottery picks (Jalen Duren and Jaden Ivey) playing. Can we get them a plane to Cancun already?
Ivey made six of his eight 3s en route to 31 points but loafed just as badly as everyone else on defense. James Wiseman, returning to his college gym, was unplayably bad even against Memphis’ G Leaguers (zero points, three turnovers and a minus-20 in 14 minutes; honestly, it was worse than that). Duren was better, but that’s damning with faint praise; he wasn’t exactly dominant going against players he should own.
Our James Edwards went through the Pistons’ roster and analyzed who the keepers might be this offseason. However, in Year 4 of a rebuild, it’s worrisome that the answer among the players who played Friday might be “none of the above.”
• Houston: One thing that stands out about the post-Alperen Şengün-injury Rockets has been their defensive versatility and speed. They’re undersized with Jabari Smith Jr. masquerading as a center but made up for it with virtually impenetrable perimeter defense. Few teams can line up stoppers like Dillon Brooks, Fred VanVleet and Amen Thompson across the perimeter, while Jalen Green’s attention has steadily improved too.
That vision was apparent early on Sunday. Green picked Luka Dončić’s dribble on the first play, and Houston forced four turnovers from him in the first quarter. The Rockets were winning 28-9 after seven minutes, and even Dallas’ mighty offense struggled to get any good looks against them.
Then Thompson was ejected for roughing up Maxi Kleber off the ball, and the whole game changed. Houston’s rotation from that point forward always had at least one player Dončić or Kyrie Irving felt very comfortable attacking, and the Rockets’ proclivity for fouling caught up to them.
Nonetheless, it was a compelling vision for what this team could be next year. The return of Şengün and the boost from other young players such as Thompson, Cam Whitmore and Tari Eason will make the Rockets even scarier a year from now, plus they have the cap flexibility to pursue upgrades via trade or free agency. Between hiring Ime Udoka and overhauling the roster, Houston went from 29th in defense to sixth in one season, despite still having a very young core. The next step is to dial back all the hacking and add at least one more skill player on the perimeter.
• Dallas: I’ll go deeper on the Mavs once I start previewing the playoffs, because their likely matchup with the LA Clippers is the marquee series of the first round. Let’s start here, though, since nobody has really talked about it much: What a move to resurrect Dante Exum, uh?
He played 35 minutes and hit the game-tying 3 at the end of regulation Sunday and has given Dallas the kind of solid two-way minutes that have been in such short supply around Dončić the last two years. Exum makes pennies above the minimum and is signed through the end of next season; he’s shooting 50 percent from 3(!) and has a 65.3 percent true shooting mark. On a team that is locked into having tax issues this year and next, it’s hard to overstate how massive it is to have an undrafted low-dollar contributor like that.
Cap Geekery: Playoff rosters, two-ways
Amazingly, there are three open roster spots in the entire league right now. Almost all the post-trade-deadline roster shuffling is done, with Golden State likely dragging its feet on filling its 15th spot because of the luxury tax ramifications.
However, one situation to monitor is that two-way players are not eligible for either the playoffs or the Play-In Tournament. As a result, any two-way player would have to be promoted to the 15-man roster this week to be able to play after April 15.
That’s happened for two prominent players already, as Minnesota signed Luka Garza last week to fill its final roster spot and Boston did the same on Monday with big man Neemias Queta. One other seems extremely likely in the coming days, as Philadelphia’s Ricky Council IV played a big role in Sunday’s overtime win in San Antonio and the Sixers still have an open roster spot.
The final situation that bears some watching is in Atlanta, where the suddenly important Vit Krejčí — who has played at least 15 minutes in 16 straight games and started 13 of them — would have to be promoted to be eligible to face the Chicago Bulls in the 9-10 Play-In. The issue for Atlanta is that the Hawks don’t have an open roster spot, nor do they have a totally obvious cut.
Vit Krejčí looks to make a pass as Coby White defends. (Kamil Krzaczynski / USA Today)
Youngsters Kobe Bufkin, Mouhamed Gueye and AJ Griffin hardly play, but you’re not waiving them just to promote a two-way. Saddiq Bey is out for the season and a restricted free agent after it, but it’s irrational to burn his Bird rights to make a move like this. Fellow wings Garrison Mathews and Wes Matthews have also been playing regularly. And guard Trent Forrest and center Bruno Fernando have been necessary fallbacks at point guard and center, respectively.
Nonetheless, the 6-8 guard seemingly has to fit somewhere. Atlanta has less than a week to figure out whose spot he should take.
Stat Geekery: Malachi Flynn’s 50-burger
Step aside, Corey Brewer. Mover over, Willie Burton. We have a new king on the all-time “Most Unlikely Player to Score 50” list after Detroit’s Malachi Flynn improbably dropped 50 on Atlanta this past Wednesday, nearly doubling his career high. As if to prove the point, I witnessed his next game Friday in Memphis, where he shot 0 of 12.
In his fourth season, and on his third team this year, Flynn has operated more as a scorer on a denuded Detroit roster rather than the caretaker point guard role he was asked to fill in Toronto, and that’s more the style he played in college.
That said, it’s not like he’s Carmelo Anthony. In fact, Flynn’s game log is a site to behold. He has three scoreless games this month, and his last five games read out 3-9-50-3-3. Before Wednesday, his season high was 17, and the only time he’d ever scored more than 22 points in an NBA game was the final two contests of the “Tampa Tank” in 2021.
Somehow, some way, all that changed for one magical night in Atlanta. Coming off the bench for 34 minutes, Flynn was 18-of-25 from the field, including five 3-pointers and five non-paint 2s, and scored 19 fourth-quarter points without the benefit of a single free throw.
(Top photo of Joel Embiid: Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Images)
