PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Tyrese Maxey tried to cheer himself up after a 76ers’ double-overtime loss by planning a night of gaming.
Before he left the locker room, Maxey shared a few stories with teammate Jared McCain of what it’s like playing against Golden State’s Stephen Curry. McCain’s rookie season was cut short because of injury and his eyes about popped when he ran down this week’s schedule and realized he might get a chance to play against the two-time NBA MVP. At 25, Maxey played his role of mentor and cautioned, this Curry guy is tough to guard.
A bit earlier, V.J. Edgecombe dissected his game dressed in NBA draft combine shorts, a nice fit and a fitting reminder that the prized rookie and No. 3 pick is still months out of college — even as he’s had games that very much flashed future All-Star potential.
Oh, to be young in the NBA.
Maxey seems like a hardened veteran compared to the 21-year-old McCain and the 20-year-old Edgecombe. The trio of first-rounders — Maxey is not only an All-Star but surging toward All-NBA status — give the Sixers the type of fresh talent they could build a perennial playoff contender around.
It’s the scenes around the rest of the locker room that again have the 76ers stuck in the NBA mud.
There’s 35-year-old Paul George pulling a sleeve over his left leg to help in his recovery from yet another injury in a list of them that cost him most of his first season-plus with the 76ers.
About 65 minutes after the final horn, a glum Joel Embiid trudged from the back to his locker, put his hands behind his back, and answered more questions — the ones that have defined his injury-plagued career — about how he feels, what are the next steps, the hurdles in his recovery from … what is it this time? Ah, yes, a sore right knee.
“I don’t want to talk about injury,” Embiid said.
But he did, because it's the dominant topic both of his career and of a Sixers season that is teetering so much between hope and excitement because of their young guards and another failure because of the untold health woes of their aging, expensive, injured franchise cornerstones.
The 76ers' loss to Atlanta was notable — not just for Maxey's fourth 40-point game of the season — but because it marked the first time this season the trio of Maxey, Embiid and George started a game together. The early reviews were mixed: Embiid scored 18 points in a season-high 30 minutes (but sat out the entire second OT) and George scored 16 points (even as he missed 6 of 8 3-pointers). Embiid's injuries have robbed the elite defender of his mobility and limited him to a mostly stationary four rebounds. Maxey, an 88% free-throw shooter, missed two from the line that could have stretched the lead to four, but instead cost the Sixers in the final seconds of OT. He played 52 minutes.
The 76ers are 10-9 headed into a busy slate of four games this week against Washington, a back-to-back against Golden State and Milwaukee and Sunday against the Los Angeles Lakers. George and Embiid likely won't play in at least one of the back-to-backs (they are on the road Friday against the Bucks) and a game against the two-win Wizards should be winnable without them.
Should be, of course. Without Embiid, George and Edgecombe (left calf tightness), the 76ers trailed by as many as 46 points last week in a home loss to Orlando.
Coach Nick Nurse has long accepted that playing with essentially a new roster each night is part of the deal with coaching the Sixers — ask Doc Rivers or Brett Brown about those challenges. Even when he has Dominick Barlow or Andre Drummond in the starting lineup, Nurse has kept the Sixers afloat and in the very early conversation of playing for an Eastern Conference playoff spot.
Nurse down to the casual fan knows the Sixers will only go as far as Embiid — and to a lesser extent, George — will take them.
George is anchored to the Sixers in the second year of a four-year, $212 million contract and the 76ers still signed Embiid in 2024 to a three-year, $193 million extension that doesn’t kick in until next season.
That's a lot of money and a lot of years lavished on two players who don't play a lot of games.
The 31-year-old Embiid has played in just seven of 19 games after he was limited to 19 games last season and had arthroscopic surgery on his left knee in April following an injury-plagued season that also included a sprained left foot and a sinus fracture.
Embiid's prime was played without a regular second scorer as the 76ers cycled through everyone from Ben Simmons to Jimmy Butler to James Harden without ever getting out of the second round of the playoffs. Now that the Sixers finally have a bona fide explosive scorer in Maxey, Embiid is no longer the MVP-type player — as he was when he won the award in 2023 — that can be counted on for a consistent two-man game.
“I do feel bad,” Embiid said. “It's unfortunate. You can only control what you can control. If anybody thinks that I don't want to play every game, that's their problem. History has shown I'll do anything to play just one game of basketball. I do feel bad. The minutes that he has to play, the load that he has to handle, I've been there. I know how he feels.”
Should Embiid ever get his legs under him, just maybe the Sixers can make some noise down the stretch.
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