The Sixers knew they’d have to be a better rebounding team than they have in recent seasons. After finishing in the bottom 10 for the past couple of seasons, it was something that Nick Nurse stressed quite a bit throughout training camp.

They had plenty of problems in their first loss of the season to the Detroit Pistons. Jaylen Brown shot 5-of-20 from the field and the team as a whole came out of the gate slow, very much looking like a group that was playing their third game in four days.

With Joel Embiid resting on the second half of a back-to-back, it showed how dire the situation on the glass can be when he is out of the lineup. Starting a 41-year old LeBron James at center, the Sixers were out rebounded 54-37 by a Pistons team without starting center Jalen Duren in the lineup. They surrendered 15 offensive rebounds which led to 24 second-chance points.

Of course Embiid wasn’t the only missing Sixer in the front court. Jabari Walker missed the game with knee soreness after tweaking it the night before and Dominick Barlow has yet to play this season with a lumbar spine injury. Even Tacko Fall, who was converted to a two-way contract at the end of the preseason, has yet to see any action as he’s dealing with a quad injury.

Tyrese Maxey made note after the game that those reinforcements coming back should help them a lot.

“Some of our tall guys can come back, that would be great,” he said.

LeBron James referenced one of his old teammates, Taurean Prince, trying to hammer home that sometimes it’s as simple as going up and getting it.

“The ball goes up in the air,” James said, “and you go grab it.”

Both Maxey and James know the Sixers need to do more than just that. So does Nick Nurse, who’s trying to find ways for this team to finish possessions with the guys he has available.

“All five guys got to rebound. I just look at the numbers there and the defensive rebounding, just across the board, no matter position, just aren’t good enough,” Nurse said after the game, “so, everybody’s got to chip in with a few more.”

Even when Walker and Barlow are back, the only true center on the roster on nights Embiid will miss is Adem Bona, a springy center who’s struggled as a rebounder. In his best performance of the season, Bona had 13 rebounds in 25 minutes of play, but still let some crucial boards slip through his fingers, including two on one possession that led to Daniss Jenkins hitting the dagger three that put the game away.

Both Bona and Maxey stressed that the Sixers need to do a better job of finding their man and boxing out, regardless of position.

“We just got to hit, box out, try to fight, you got to figure it out,” Maxey said. “The ball comes off the rim, you gotta do whatever you gotta do to get that rebound.”

On top of the attention to the matchups, Bona believes that more Sixers crashing the glass on the offensive end will help even things out.

“Offensively, we got to rebound as a team. Sometimes we just have one guy going or we have two,” Bona said. “Obviously, we have to worry about fast breaks, getting back, but at the same time we also got to focus a little more on offensive rebounding.”

It’s an area of the game the Sixers will have to put more attention to, but for the time being, they’re in a tough spot to grab boards, personnel wise. They’ve been relying on LeBron to fill in center minutes so far, but they know that’s not a long-term solution.

“I don’t see it being a sustainable role,” James said, “but it’s a role we know that we can tap into if we need it.”

The end of the bench has really been depleted by injuries a week into the season — there’s not much they can do about that.The only legitimate criticism of the roster construction at the moment is the aforementioned use of the two-way on Fall. As tall as he is at 7-foot-6, Fall proved to not be a rotation player in his first stint in the NBA. Relying on a guy who was never a rotation-caliber player, hasn’t played in the NBA in four years, and also missed all of training camp and preseason with an injury to provide the help the team needs feels …. ambitious, to say the least.

The Sixers obviously aren’t going to achieve the goals they desire without Embiid in the lineup when the games matter. They do have to figure out how they’re going to eat those innings in the time it takes getting there.