With or without Joel Embiid, 76ers will trudge on, even if it costs them in the draft

PHILADELPHIA – Against my better judgment, the 76ers are going on with this season.

Despite their season careening out of control, with Joel Embiid again on the shelf and Paul George not yet having been able to transfer his game from the West Coast back East — and despite owing their first-round pick in 2025 to Oklahoma City if they aren’t a bottom-six team — the Sixers are committed to waiting this out. Committed to waiting for Embiid, who’s missed the last 11 games, to get back on the court. Committed to this iteration of The Process, with Embiid, George and Tyrese Maxey, along with vets who have struggled to hold up their ends of the bargain.

An argument — my argument — would be to tell Embiid to take the rest of the season off and finally, and at long last, get right physically after already missing time this season with swelling in his balky left knee, a fractured right sinus and a left foot sprain. Use the eight-plus months before the start of next season to rest, recuperate and have a spring free of playoff wear and tear to get himself into the best shape of his life as he turns 31, and starts the remaining years of his career.

But there will be no Process 2.0 the rest of the way here, a half-season tank to ensure Philly holds onto that 2025 first, and lives to fight another season. It may occur organically anyway, given the Sixers’ anemic numbers at both ends of the court: 24th in offensive rating going into Saturday’s game at Chicago and 22nd in defensive rating. But it won’t be by design.

First and foremost, the 76ers still think Embiid, who’s played in just 13 games this season, is a franchise-level player.

“We’re still really happy with Joel,” 76ers majority owner Josh Harris told The Athletic this week. “He’s a warrior. I’ve seen this. He’s fought through a lot of injuries. You remember when we started, in his first (two) years, he didn’t play at all. And then, in his third year, he played 30-something games. And then, he fought through all of that, and became the MVP. So, he’s fighting right now, and we’re fighting. And I’m hopeful and optimistic that we’ll get through.

“I want him to get his body right and get on the court. If he gets back on the court, everything’s going to fall into place. I know him as a person, and I know him as an individual, and I know how hard he’s working. I think he’s also super-smart and very in-tune with his body. He has a whole team around him, and we have a whole team around him. He’s getting the absolute best care and best advice. I’m hopeful that he’ll fight through this and make it happen, and that’s what we’re going to plan for right now.”

The Sixers are pinning their hopes, whether you agree with them or not, on a few factors. They believe that Embiid’s knee will not require surgery, and that he can return to the court sometime sooner rather than later. And, they don’t believe that extended rest for Embiid is the way to go. To the contrary — they think he does better when he’s engaged in trying to ramp up to return to action. (Left aside for now is the argument about whether Embiid should use the start of the regular season to get into and stay in peak condition, rather than coming to camp in tip-top shape.)

They also point to recent veteran teams that floundered during regular seasons, yet caught fire late. The 2022-23 Heat went 44-38 in the regular season, snuck into the playoffs at the last possible moment by beating Chicago in the Play-In round, but then smoked the Bucks, Knicks and Celtics in succession to make the finals. The 2022-23 Lakers went 43-39, finished seventh in the West, also went the Play-In route, and also went on an extended playoff run, reaching the West finals.

In addition, while the Sixers could conceivably get into the bottom six and keep their pick by selling off players/contracts before the trade deadline and putting Embiid on ice the rest of the season — given the season-long bottoming out by Utah, Washington, New Orleans and Charlotte — it’s more likely that even if Philly went full-bore into a tank, it would wind up, at best, at five or six in the draft. League sources say the Sixers don’t think there’s a whole lot of difference between the quality of the fifth or sixth pick in this draft and a post-six pick that the Sixers would have to send to OKC. Maybe 15 percent.

At any rate, selling a tank run to George, who came here in the offseason for four years and $212 million, or Maxey, who got a five-year, $204 million extension in the summer, would be a tough business.

“To be honest, we don’t know what we look like, because we haven’t been healthy. So, to be honest, we might have enough in here already,” George said after Philly had one of its best performances of the season Friday, beating the East-leading Cavaliers 132-129 in a wildly entertaining affair at Wells Fargo Center. And, indeed, Embiid and George and Maxey have only played 10 games together this season.

You could be seduced into thinking a run was possible if you watched Friday’s game instead, of, say, the Sixers getting humiliated in Denver on Tuesday, giving up a buck-44 in the … process.

The Sixers matched the Cavs 3 for 3 on Friday, big play for big play. Cleveland was 25 of 52 behind the arc; Philly was 21 of 39. Kelly Oubre went for 22 points and 13 rebounds before fouling out. Maxey dominated the first half offensively; George, the second. Eric Gordon dropped in four triples; Justin Edwards, the two-way swingman from Kentucky, made three. George’s bucket with 1:26 left gave him 30 for the night, and provided Philly just enough cushion to hold off the Cavs, who were playing without Evan Mobley and Caris LeVert.

“I know, again, broken record time, but when your offense is so much better, your defense has a much better chance,” coach Nick Nurse said afterward. “You’re taking and making shots; you’re finishing at the rim. You’re taking rhythm shots, even, so at least, guys have some sense of, OK, there’s the extra pass, that next pass is going up, and I can start getting ahead of the game a little bit, getting ahead in transition.”

It still was a sugar high, given what Philadelphia thought of its potential before the start of the season.

But even a half-season tank is anathema around here. Not after four years of The Process last decade. The debate on whether the strategy was worth it or not will go on for decades. Has Embiid’s career, highlighted by his 2023 league MVP season, been worth all that losing? Has being a good, occasionally very good (seven straight postseasons!), but not great (no conference finals appearances!) team, for an extended stretch, justified either Sam Hinkie’s success in getting multiple high-lottery picks — or, his ouster as general manager in 2016, after other clubs complained vociferously to the league and to Harris that the Sixers’ tanking was harming their home gates?

(Also: Why on God’s green earth has another team not hired Sam Hinkie?)

So, even though there’d be a ping-pong ball’s chance of getting Cooper Flagg or Dylan Harper or Ace Bailey in the draft, no one named Josh Harris wants to go through that again.

“I would say that, again, we always start with trying to build elite teams,” Harris told The Athletic. “We started this season with two potential Hall of Famers, and one All-Star. We were very excited about the season. Obviously, it’s been a disappointing season. No one’s happy with where we are. We’re not happy. I go to a lot of games. We want to be winning and creating the contending team that we’ve had over the last five years. The injuries haven’t helped us. The elite team we had hasn’t been on the court more than seven games, where they started and finished the game. We won six of seven of those. I think we got it right.

“But what’s happened is, obviously, Joel hasn’t played a lot. He’s the lynchpin of the whole thing. When he doesn’t play, the pressure comes on Paul, and it comes on Tyrese. And Tyrese has had to carry a lot of the load, and, in some cases, Paul has had to carry a lot of the load. And people have had to do things that they weren’t necessarily prepared for.”

Veterans like Gordon, Andre Drummond, Caleb Martin, Reggie Jackson and a re-signed Kyle Lowry were supposed to supplement what Embiid, George and Maxey produced nightly, not replace it. At this stage of their careers, they can’t carry that load. The same goes for first-year guard Jared McCain, taken 16th in last year’s draft by president of basketball operations Daryl Morey, and who was having a sensational rookie season before being lost for the season last month, after suffering a torn left meniscus.

Morey takes the heat for going the vet route rather than bringing in younger, more athletic wings and bigs, and maybe, given Embiid’s injury history, a hedge toward more youth would have been the way to go. But that’s hindsight.

This week, Philly starts a rugged six-game homestand that will go a long way to determining its level of aggression at the deadline. The Lakers are in on Tuesday, the Kings on Wednesday, the Nuggets on Friday. Boston arrives a week from Sunday; Dallas is in on Feb. 4 before the Heat come to town the next night. The deadline is the following afternoon, at 3 p.m. ET. Whether the 76ers are (small) buyers or (big) sellers no doubt depends on the results of the next week-plus.

“So, the next few weeks are important, what happens there,” Harris said. “We’re going to see what happens there and make a good decision. And we’ll audible at that point, and we’ll find the right spot. We have a great front office. Nick Nurse won an NBA title. Unfortunately, we ran into that that year. Daryl and (general manager) Elton (Brand) are good at what they do. We’re honest. Give us a few weeks to answer that question. We’re going to react to that.”

George knows what he’ll tell management, if asked.

“Even the couple of games I was out, they took a couple of teams to the wire,” George said. “We’ve been playing fairly decent basketball again. It just comes down to not being available, when we need guys. That’s the only thing. So, you can’t. … you can’t really say that we need extra people here. I think we’ve got enough.”

Sign up to get The Bounce, the essential NBA newsletter from Zach Harper and The Athletic staff, delivered free to your inbox.

(Photo of Joel Embiid: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)