Leaks, team meetings, losses: The factors driving the Sixers' dreadful start

THE JULY 6 POST on Daryl Morey’s Instagram page is even more perfectly staged than anyone in the photo realized. Morey, the Philadelphia 76ers president of basketball operations is on the left, dressed in all black with a blue suit jacket. General manager Elton Brand has his arm around him. Free agent forward Paul George, wearing sweat shorts and an Allen Iverson T-shirt, has his arms around owner Josh Harris and assistant general manager Peter Dinwiddie. And none other than Hall of Famer Julius Erving is on the far right, with a black leather baseball cap in his hand.

It was taken in the wee hours of the night of July 1 after George committed to sign a four-year, $212 million deal and the Sixers began their victory lap as the unofficial winners of the NBA’s offseason.

Everyone in the photo looks happy, tired from the long journey but comfortable in their socks after the two-hour meeting at George’s house in West Los Angeles.

Yes, socks.

Each of the men had taken off their shoes before entering George’s house so as not to track dirt and whatever else might’ve traveled with them onto his hardwood floors.

But as anyone who has followed the Sixers during their disastrous 3-13 start to this season has long since learned, none of the baggage was left at the door.

Philadelphia hasn’t just scuffled out of the gates. What was celebrated as a championship-level roster has nose-dived to the second-worst record in the NBA. Joel Embiid has played in just four of those games because of knee injury management or suspension. George has played in just eight games after two scary-looking left knee hyperextensions. All-Star guard Tyrese Maxey has missed six games with a hamstring injury.

And just to underscore how much karmic detritus the Sixers have had to confront already this season, this week the NBA schedule-makers assigned them games against the teams they’ve made seismic, league-altering trades with in the past four years: first, an ugly 113-98 win at home over one of the original, now-fallen sons of “The Process,” Ben Simmons, and the Brooklyn Nets on Friday.

Then, two days later, a dispiriting 125-99 loss to James Harden and the Los Angeles Clippers on Sunday; and then Wednesday’s home game against the Houston Rockets, who are surging after the savvy rebuild with the players and draft picks they acquired in the first Harden trade.

The offseason victory lap has long since turned into a desperate sprint toward a more tepid goal: winning enough games to stay within striking distance of a play-in tournament appearance, which team sources estimate will take at least 33 wins in the putrid Eastern Conference. Philadelphia entered the season projected to win 51.5 games.

Already this season, Embiid, the 2023 NBA MVP, responded to critics who questioned his desire to play, saying, “I’ve done way too much for this f—ing city to be treated like this. Days later, Embiid was suspended three games by the league for shoving a reporter who mentioned Embiid’s son and late brother in a critical column. In a team meeting, Maxey called out Embiid for being “late to everything,” which resulted in Embiid and George calling out whomever leaked the story to ESPN. And perhaps most troubling of all — Maxey made a plea to “play with some pride” after Sunday’s loss.

“Except for [Jared] McCain, everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong,” one team source said.

On good days the Sixers remind themselves the season is long and their three stars have played exactly six minutes together so far. They remind themselves that they’re only one 4-1 week away from getting back into the playoff picture, like the Milwaukee Bucks just did.

On bad days, they hear the growing league chatter that they should soon think about packing it in as their first-round pick in this year’s otherworldly draft is top-six protected or owed to the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Still, every day they walk by signs in Wells Fargo Arena with pictures of Maxey, Embiid and George that tout, rather ironically, how they were, “Made For This.”

ON JULY 23, in front of a blue Sixers lectern, and next to a smiling George and Josh Harris, Morey introduced the nine-time All-Star and said this season was about putting three “really, really great players together” and surrounding Embiid with the kind of roster that could help the Sixers contend for a championship.

He said the same when Harden was there and Maxey was emerging as a cornerstone. And he said it about Simmons before that. So had former coach Brett Brown about Jimmy Butler and Markelle Fultz before that.

At heart, Morey is a man of analytics and strategy. Each year he builds a team that he believes gives them the best probability to win a championship. His formula for calculating that probability is proprietary, but championship contenders usually have a 5-10% chance of winning — except the dynastic Warriors, whom Morey’s formula once had at close to 70% to win a title after they added Kevin Durant in 2016.

Vegas oddsmakers assign values to each team’s chances in the preseason, too. The Sixers entered the season with the fourth-highest odds to win the title, at roughly 8-1, per ESPN Bet. This year, the Sixers came in with what Morey had determined was the highest chance to win of any team he had assembled, including the 2018 Houston Rockets team that pushed the Warriors to the brink in the Western Conference finals.

That calculus was based on the premise that Philadelphia had won the offseason by signing George and role players such as Caleb Martin, Andre Drummond and Eric Gordon to pair with Maxey and Embiid. But it was also based on the so-far misguided idea that the Sixers’ three stars would be healthy for a sustained period of time.

The team and Embiid had sought half a dozen medical opinions before signing him to a three-year, $192.7 extension this September, sources said, and all of those consulted believed his knee could be adequately managed by a combination of strategic rest and procedures to promote healing, which Embiid has been regularly undergoing since last season.

Both the team and Embiid hoped his troublesome knee would be healthy enough to start the season, sources said. Yet week after week, the Sixers would issue updates that he was still out, but they were hopeful he’d be ready soon.

At first it seemed as though he simply needed more time to work his way back into shape after taking time off following the Summer Olympics. But as the preseason wore on, it was clear to anyone who saw him that Embiid’s knee wasn’t right.

When he finally debuted on Nov. 12 against the New York Knicks, his usual burst out of a 3-point stance was slow, and he was passive in attacking the rim. He scored 13 points on 2-of-11 shooting in 26 minutes.

The Sixers lost 111-99.

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THERE ARE ENDLESS reminders of how high the Sixers were after landing George as a free agent this summer.

There was Harris, saying over and over that the Sixers were “all-in” with this move during George’s introductory news conference.

There was Embiid, proudly saying that with George now on the team, he would probably never play in another back-to-back again as he tried to safeguard his health for the playoffs.

There was George, who on his podcast characterized the Clippers as the “B-team” in L.A., only to be mocked by Clippers fans who brought signs that read, “Think before you speak, PG,” as he and the Sixers lost their first game back in Los Angeles on Nov. 6, 110-98.

The harsher pills to swallow are the face-to-face confrontations with characters from Philadelphia’s past such as Harden, who dropped a cool 23 points and eight assists in three quarters against his former team Sunday evening.

The home fans showed up fully intending to take their frustrations of the season out on Harden throughout the game, booing him during pregame introductions and virtually every time he touched the ball early on.

But the Clippers built such a large lead so quickly, it was hard to maintain the vitriol.

Afterward Harden shrugged when asked if there was any extra emotion to the game back in Philadelphia, saying he’d moved on, then noting that life really was better on his new team, which had just won its fifth straight game despite playing without star forward Kawhi Leonard all season.

“One thing about this [Clippers] team, we’re all happy for each other,” Harden said. “It can be anybody’s night on any given night and nobody is going to be upset, everybody is going to be happy for each other.”

The matchup with Simmons was more sad than cruel last Friday.

For years the Philly fans booed him heartily each time he returned to face the team he forced his way out of in 2022. Embiid wouldn’t even say his name, referring to him by his number and only when he had to.

But so much has gone wrong for Simmons and his former team in the years they’ve been apart that Simmons’ presence back in Philadelphia barely registered this time. He’d even reached out to Embiid and others last summer, league sources said, hoping to mend fences. Simmons, who is in the final year of his contract in Brooklyn, has shown how he can still impact a game with his passing, length and defense. But in the second quarter of the game Friday, he also missed the rim on a layup in a clip that quickly went viral — reminding everyone of how his time in Philadelphia went awry. Could they ever try to figure it out together again? One source called it unlikely, but stranger things have happened. Especially with the Sixers.

In another cruel coincidence, all of the other teams the Sixers seemed to beat in the offseason when they landed George have thrived thus far. The Clippers have overachieved at 11-7. The Warriors, who made a spirited play to trade for George, are leading the Western Conference at 12-4. The New York Knicks, who league sources said opted to trade for Mikal Bridges rather than pursue George, are 9-7. And the Denver Nuggets, who held onto their young core of Christian Braun, Julian Strawther and Peyton Watson, rather than engage in deeper discussions to trade for George, are 9-6, despite significant injury woes.

About the only bright spot for Philadelphia has been rookie guard Jared McCain, who has become a leading contender for Rookie of the Year after being pressed into service by the injuries to Maxey and veteran guard Kyle Lowry. McCain has scored 20 or more in seven of their past 10 games and is leading all rookies in points per game (16.6) and viral TikTok videos.

On Nov. 18, Embiid got sick the night before the Sixers were scheduled to play in Miami. After he missed shootaround, the Sixers downgraded him to doubtful on the injury report. But within a couple hours of the game, Embiid sent word that he intended to give it a go.

While the team appreciated Embiid’s effort to play, the uncertainty over his availability had hurt preparations for the game, sources said. He scored 11 points in 31 minutes in the 106-89 loss.

In the four games Embiid has played this season, the Sixers are winless — a dramatic reversal from last year when the Sixers went 31-8 in games Embiid played but just 16-27 in games he missed.

Throughout his career, Embiid has generally kept to himself when he was sick or injured. But with the team reeling, Maxey felt he should be with the team at shootarounds and meetings and said so in an hour-long team meeting after the loss in Miami.

Embiid took those words to heart, team sources said, and wasn’t angry with Maxey. But he and other players also aired frustration with the coaching staff and each other at not always knowing what they were trying to accomplish on both ends of the court.

Nurse acknowledged the meeting in his postgame comments in Miami, noting it was the reason he was over an hour late.

“We need to start winning,” Nurse said. “[The] meeting was brutally honest. Everybody wants the team to succeed and right now we’re not. We’re losing and there’s all kinds of issues and reasons for why, and we’re trying to get it taken care of. We knew at the beginning of the season that we needed to be healthy and we needed to have some things come together quickly. So far, none of that has happened. So, I think everybody just needed to get these things on the table, and I think in that sense, [the] meeting was a step for us in the right direction.”

That was supposed to be it. Air was cleared, words were said. But the next morning, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported on the details of the meeting, further exacerbating the tension and lack of trust in the locker room, sources said.

It’s hard to say where all this bad karma originated.

It’s even harder to know when — or if — it will stop.