Nick Nurse did a good job with the Sixers, especially Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey

Complaining that Sixers coach Nick Nurse was eliminated in the first round is like complaining that Gordon Ramsay’s entrée tasted bad when all he had to use was last week’s leftovers.

Nurse did the best he could with what he had.

Joel Embiid, the reigning MVP, missed 32 of the last 40 games of the regular season after knee surgery, but there was so much more absence. Starting shooting guard De’Anthony Melton missed 43 of the last 50 games with a bad back. Backup forward Robert Covington, a defensive stopper, missed the last 49 games. Nico Batum missed 11 of the last 46. All-Star point guard Tyrese Maxey missed 11 of the last 39.

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“I thought we really challenged Coach Nurse this year,” team president Daryl Morey said Monday. “That long stretch without Joel was tough.”

Indeed, Morey left Nurse with backups such as enigmatic centers Paul Reed and Mo Bamba, as well as leather-tough but offensively challenged veterans Patrick Beverley and Marcus Morris, whom he traded for offense.

“All everybody kept talking about was Joel, but there was a time when we had a whole fleet of guys out,” Nurse said after the Game 6 loss to the Knicks that ended the 76ers’ season.

What about the backups?

“I feel like I could have done a better job with the players so that we were in a better spot to win without him,” Morey admitted. “The depth wasn’t quite there.”

“It was really difficult. We had a lot of injury issues all year long,” Nurse said. “But I thought we fought.”

That’s all a coach can ask.

In 82 games, the Sixers put 36 different starting lineups on the floor, the most of any playoff team. The average of the other 15 playoff teams was just over 20 different starting lineups.

If you’ve watched, say, the New York Knicks and Minnesota Timberwolves play this postseason, you’ll recognize their cohesion, especially on the defensive end and on the defensive glass. They play well together because they’ve been together; the Knicks had 19 different starting lineups, the Timberwolves only 13.

If you watched the Sixers’ first-round series against the Knicks, especially on the defensive end and the defensive glass, you saw lots of mistakes and confusion. You can usually blame poor coaching for such deficits, but, in Nurse’s case, he simply didn’t have enough time with his players to create cohesion. He also lacked significant players: Covington didn’t play at all in the postseason. Melton played seven minutes.

“When you’re coaching and you’ve got so much movement, with who’s in, who’s out, you never quite get organized or in sync, or the connectivity that you’d love to have as a coach,” Nurse said. “Felt like we had to do a lot of stuff on the fly. A lot of stuff off the board.”

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Drawing up schemes sometimes minutes before games — many of the hindered players were game-time decisions — always leads to chaos. No matter how much talent you have, you cannot coach through chaos.

So, then, how to best judge Nurse’s first year? Simple.

Did the most important players get better?

Without question, the two players Nurse was charged with improving — Embiid and Maxey — improved.

As usual, Embiid was never in shape, which isn’t Nurse’s problem. He was in horrid condition when he returned from surgery, which is to be expected.

Still, Embiid averaged 34.7 points, a career-high by 1.6 points, which would have led the league for a second straight year. He made 38.8% of his three-pointers and 88.3% of his free throws, both career highs, and shot 52.9% from the field overall, his second-best such showing. His 11.0 rebounds matched his mark from the four previous seasons, and his 1.7 blocks matched his career average.

The most marked improvement: 5.6 assists per game, an increase of 2.0 assists over the four previous seasons. Nurse finally taught Embiid how to beat a double-team.

It should be noted that Doc Rivers did much to develop Maxey, the 21st overall pick in 2020, into a budding star, as he helped Embiid develop into an MVP. Nurse succeeded Rivers not because of player development problems but rather because Rivers’ stars didn’t shine when needed (also, James Harden wanted him gone, but that’s a different story). At any rate, while Maxey might have been budding under Doc, he blossomed under Nick.

Maxey evolved from a flawed shooting guard and part-time point guard to a less-flawed, full-time point guard. A lot of that had to do with need — Harden’s refusal to report and his trade demand moved Maxey to the point — but most of it had to do with hard work and adaptability.

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His scoring average jumped from 20.3 to 25.9, while his shooting percentages slipped both short- and long-range. Of course, playing as Embiid and Harden’s safety valve presented lots of wide-open looks, and without Harden (and Embiid), he had to create his own shot more often. He remained efficient enough. He broke 50 points three times and had more than 30 points in 22 games, as well as in three of the six playoff games.

Like Embiid, though, his most impressive stat didn’t involve scoring. He averaged 6.2 assists, almost double his first three seasons’ average, but committed just 1.7 turnovers. The Sixers hoped Maxey, who had never played the point, would just be a serviceable point guard. He turned out to be an All-Star.

Only three other starters who averaged at least 6.2 assists committed as few as 1.7 turnovers. One of them was Houston’s Fred VanVleet, an undrafted success story who landed in Toronto in 2016. He got a new coach in 2018 who turned him into an All-Star by 2022.

The name of that coach: Nick Nurse.