Nate Tramdaks, Staff Writer

During the NBA All-Star break, Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe represented the 76ers in Inglewood, California. Maxey and Team Stars won the All-Star Game on Sunday and Edgecombe won Rising Stars MVP on Saturday. Aside from the All-Star festivities, this week-long break was a perfect time for the Sixers to regroup as a team as they enter the final stretch of the regular season and push onward to the playoffs. This team has had a lot of bright spots and some dark spots this season, but where do they stand at this point in the playoffs?

Coming out of the break, the Sixers sit at 30-24, sixth in the Eastern Conference and 3.5 games back of fourth (home court in the first round). Any Sixers fan would have signed for this record at this point back in October. Maxey has been playing at an All-NBA first-team level, Edgecombe looks like the second best rookie in the class just behind Cooper Flagg, and Embiid seems to be playing like his former self, but this doesn’t seem to be reflected in their record.

For the entirety of the season it has seemed like the Sixers would get within a 0.5 game or a game of third place, but would then drop two of their next three and fall right back to fifth or sixth. A lot of this has been due to the inconsistency with the play of Paul George and Joel Embiid. When they are fully healthy, they can compete with any roster in the league. Through the early part of the season, when Embiid was playing so infrequently, they had two different identities. With Embiid out, Maxey and Edgecombe were free to run in transition and were a more pace-and-spaced team. With Embiid in, they turn into a stagnant half-court team that is reliant on Embiid post-ups and an Embiid-Maxey two-man game. This parity in identity has been concerning in the regular season because it has been hard for them to build a rhythm. However, this will benefit the team in the playoffs, which is half-court and low-pace dominated. This has been the ideal for Sixer playoff success, finding the best infrastructure to support an Embiid-centric offense. 

At the deadline, many Sixer fans were outraged at the decision of the team to sell off Jared McCain in order to duck the tax. That is a whole different story, but the short of it is that Sixers fans’ outrage is ill-informed and the trade was a good long term move. It is understandable to expect them to buy considering how open the East is. I am partial to Daryl Morey who said, if there was a move to be made, we would have made it. Nothing of value seemed to be out there anyway when you look at who was actually moved around the league.

As the Sixers open the back half of their season, they have the 23rd hardest schedule (seventh easiest). It seems likely they can avoid the play-in, even with Paul George out for a substantial amount of time, and even try to creep up a spot or two. Embiid has reported decreased swelling in his knee, and the Sixers have brought back Cam Payne to fill up some backup PG minutes. The Sixers have the talent to make a deep run, the question remains–do they have the timing?