Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey aren’t enough. The Sixers need something even more important.

Once the 76ers’ season had ended and their locker room at the Wells Fargo Center was open to the media early Friday morning, Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey spent several minutes together seated in a corner, the foundations of the franchise conversing about fouls uncalled and opportunities missed.

Those were six thrilling games against the Knicks, a series that could have gone either way yet finished in a familiar fashion for the Sixers: a 118-115 loss in Game 6, another postseason that ended either in or short of the second round. Now, though, it’s just another typical summer here, full of speculation about what changes and additions the Sixers will make now. Paul George? Brandon Ingram? Look at all that cap space …

That talk is fine and fun, but it doesn’t address the biggest issue of all for the Sixers. What they need most is an identity, and they need to stick to it.

“They went through a lot of drama,” said forward Nico Batum, who joined the team in November, “and me seeing that from the outside, I mean …”

Even if you put aside much of the nonsense that has hovered in the atmosphere around the Sixers for years — James Harden vs. Daryl Morey, Jimmy Butler vs. Tobias Harris, Ben Simmons vs. everyone — even if you focus just on their attempts since the fall of 2017, since the start of Embiid’s first full season, to win a championship, they still live up to the perception that they’re always groping for greatness and never grasping it. There’s been nothing but tumult and upheaval here for a long time.

The Sixers tried surrounding Embiid and Simmons with fluid, sharpshooting European wing players — the kinds of players Bryan Colangelo had a particular fondness for acquiring. They traded for Butler and Harris and tried building the best starting five in the NBA and going pretty much without a bench. They signed Harris, not Butler, to a max contract, banking that Harris, because of his high off-the-court character and skill set, would develop into a player worth $180 million. He never did. He never came close.

» READ MORE: Hayes: In defeat, Embiid sees Sixers can shine with Maxey (and without Harris)

They tried “bully ball,” signing Al Horford and trading for Josh Richardson. They scrapped that approach and tried coaxing Simmons to start taking jump shots. They went from an unproven head coach in Brett Brown to a big-name coach in Doc Rivers to a tough-minded tactician in Nick Nurse. They tried pick-and-rolling teams to death with Embiid and Harden. None of it was enough to get them to the conference finals, in part because the only constant for the Sixers over the last eight years has been that under no circumstances could they afford to take Embiid off the floor for more than 30 seconds in a playoff game.

“Every single year, it’s always been one person comes in, and then the following year they’re gone,” Embiid said. “Kept happening the last few years. This is really the first time where you got [Maxey]. He’s taken a step this year, and it was amazing — one of the 10 best players in the world. Now you’ve finally got the chance to build around it, with this guy as young as he is. We’ve got a lot of cap space to make it happen.

“One of the big things when it comes to winning, you look at all the teams that have won, you can’t just put people together for one year and hope that it’s going to work out. Obviously, we have some experience together. I think that’s the way to go. We’ve just got to keep going, keep building around it, find the right mix of people to make it happen.”

OK, but what does that mix look like? Should Morey simply spend all that money and cap space on George, on another star — another Butler, another Harden? Do the Sixers even know what they’re looking for, what kinds of players they need?

“Absolutely,” Nurse said. “We’ve got expectations that you’ve got to play both ends. We’ve got some things we try to hold them accountable to. We measure a lot of things with each and every game that wouldn’t show up in the box score. I think we’ve still got some work to do.”

This series proved it, and it demonstrated just how much work the Sixers have ahead of them. Yes, Embiid and Maxey almost pulled them through, but there was still too much hair-on-fire stuff this season.

Kyle Lowry goes from being a waiver pickup to starting at point guard. Paul Reed is the furthest thing from a reliable backup center. Buddy Hield, his terrific Game 6 notwithstanding, was inconsistent at best; Nurse didn’t even play him the two previous games.

The Sixers are forever patching holes and searching for fixes and hoping for best-case scenarios. It’s tiresome, and as much effort as they gave in this series, the difference between them and the Knicks was there for those with eyes to see.

The Knicks could very well represent the Eastern Conference in this year’s NBA Finals, though it’s not likely, not with how good the Celtics are. But there’s little doubt that they will maximize the talent they have. They have a coach, Tom Thibodeau, who demands a high measure of physical toughness and psychological endurance from his team, and they have at least three core players — the Villanova dudes: Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, and Donte DiVincenzo — who play as if they would rather die than lose … and who play that way every. Freaking. Game. The Knicks know who they are, and an opponent has to beat them on their terms, if they can beat them at all.

» READ MORE: Tyrese Maxey can’t replicate his Game 5 magic, but inspires belief following an All-Star leap

For 10 years now, the Sixers haven’t had any terms. They’ve had Embiid, and now they have Maxey, too, and those two still have the promise of being better next season and beyond. But their presence and improvement won’t matter if the Sixers return in September with a roster that relies so heavily on that pairing for so much, with a team that can’t survive even for a moment without Embiid, with an organization that still can’t answer the most basic of questions: Who are we, and who do we want to be?