PHILADELPHIA \u2014 The Philadelphia 76ers are profiling as a 16-win team.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the minimum number of postseason victories it takes to win an NBA championship. The Sixers are the kind of team that excels in the playoffs because of top-end talent, and because there is enough talent to thwart defensive schemes that can take away your first and second option offensively. Philadelphia\u2019s duo of Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid is top-notch. Paul George and VJ Edgecombe are more than capable secondary scorers and playmakers. And the Sixers have the athletes and shooting to play and possibly be successful.<\/p>\n
The problem is that the Sixers must get to the playoffs and those potential 16 wins. They need to navigate the 82-game grind of the regular season. They need to secure enough wins to ensure a good seed, and they must remain healthy while doing so. With Thursday\u2019s 128-122 win over the Houston Rockets in overtime, Philadelphia earned its 24th victory of the season. It\u2019s one that can eliminate some demons, considering the Sixers won 24 games all of last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s awesome,\u201d coach Nick Nurse said when told of this statistic. \u201cI hope we can get one more.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sixers are getting through the regular season as best they can. But that isn\u2019t without its warts or adversity.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s been Maxey, who admitted early in the week that he\u2019s fatigued from all the minutes he\u2019s been playing during the year (he leads the NBA, playing 39.5 minutes per game). But, hey, Maxey scored 36 points and handed out 10 assists against Houston, so maybe he\u2019s just a mutant.<\/p>\n
There has been a prolonged homestand in which the Sixers have struggled. In that sense, beating the Rockets has to count as one of the best and most important wins of the season. And this is especially so after losing three of the first four on the homestand.<\/p>\n
And there was a change in the starting lineup, where Kelly Oubre entered and Dominick Barlow came off the bench. It put Philadelphia\u2019s best five players on the floor together: Oubre, Maxey, Edgecombe, George and Embiid, who can all dribble, shoot and pass. It was the first time this season that the Sixers started that group, and before Thursday, they had played a mere four possessions together on the season.<\/p>\n
What this Sixers team has to do is navigate a regular season that\u2019s becoming increasingly difficult in terms of schedule strength, and do so while remaining healthy in the long term. That part isn\u2019t easy. Yes, they are in the fifth spot in the Eastern Conference, but the struggles at home have come for a reason. The teams they have been playing against are good, talented and capable. And before Thursday, the Sixers hadn\u2019t played all that well on either end of the floor. A jump in competition means that a jump in your own play and execution is necessary.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to keep building, and we have to keep getting better,\u201d George said. \u201cThe goal is for us to get to the end of the season and to be healthy. We also want to be in a position to have some success.\u201d<\/p>\n
A schedule that was light at the beginning of the season has turned more unforgiving. A five-game West Coast trip looms, one that features both Los Angeles teams and a hot Phoenix Suns team. Then, the All-Star break, and then, a busy and challenging March schedule.<\/p>\n
One piece of good news is that Embiid is playing better as time passes.<\/p>\n
He scored 32 points, grabbed 15 rebounds and handed out 10 assists in 46 minutes against Houston. It was his first triple-double of the season, and it was his season high in rebounds. He talked about Jan. 22 being a special day for him \u2014 that\u2019s the date of his 70-point game two years ago \u2014 and quipped that he and his wife might try for another kid and attempt to time it for Jan. 22. After the win, Embiid made a beeline to the locker room, saw his minutes and looked at Maxey.<\/p>\n
\u201cI should never play more minutes than Tyrese Maxey,\u201d Embiid said.<\/p>\n
When Embiid is joking and trolling, you know he\u2019s feeling well. When he\u2019s rebounding the basketball, you know he\u2019s feeling well. And when he\u2019s protecting the paint, that\u2019s another sign that he\u2019s feeling well.<\/p>\n
As Thursday showed, Philadelphia is capable of playing good basketball when all of its players are available and healthy. That\u2019s why, if the Sixers are healthy once the playoffs roll around, they are a team that bears watching. They are capable of playing different styles. When their collective offense is rolling, it can be difficult to stop. Almost as importantly, the trio of Edgecombe, George and Oubre is stingy and versatile defensively.<\/p>\n
Embiid knows that. He knows the goal for the franchise is to have everyone on hand once the playoffs start. And it\u2019s become fascinating watching the Sixers navigate that road while trying to keep their standing in the East\u2019s top six.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it can be tough, because we have the most back-to-backs in the league with 16,\u201d Embiid said. \u201cWith all the back-to-backs, I haven\u2019t been playing both ends, so it can be hard to have continuity, and it can be hard for the lineup to get a rhythm. But we just have to keep going and keep getting better. We just have to keep playing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maxey\u2019s 36 against Houston came at an opportune time, as he had been slumping. The burden he\u2019s been carrying is among the heaviest in the league. When Embiid and George have been out, he\u2019s been the one who has had to make up the slack. Teams have gotten wind of this. Several have put bigger defenders on him and shaded help his way.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s different for Maxey when Embiid plays. They share the offensive responsibility. They run a two-man pick-and-roll game that has few peers around the league. But Maxey is also among the league leaders in offensive usage. There was going to be a point at which he felt fatigued. That was a guarantee.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s performance was encouraging; Maxey didn\u2019t shoot the ball well in the first half but stayed aggressive, particularly going to the basket. He fought through the fatigue. He ended up making a significant impact on both ends, the kind the Sixers are going to need when those 16 wins are on the line this spring.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to help him,\u201d Nurse said. \u201cWe\u2019d like to try and eventually get to a place where we play him a few less minutes per night. We are trying to get him a few minutes of extra rest. He\u2019s had to deal with a lot. When it\u2019s just him by himself, he has to do a lot of the scoring and playmaking, and he\u2019s playing every night. We just have to figure out ways that we can support him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA \u2014 The Philadelphia 76ers are profiling as a 16-win team. That\u2019s the minimum number of postseason victories…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,9688,85],"class_list":["post-434819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-philadelphia-76ers","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}