Five big takeaways from the Sixers’ slow start to the season

The much-anticipated 2024-25 Sixers have finally hit the court for games that count, and based on the early returns … well, they still need some work. The team has started the season 1-5, good for the second-worst record in the East — and while there are plenty of reasons for that, it’s never ideal to be sitting below the Pistons, Wizards, Hornets, and Raptors in the standings.

So, based on the limited sample of games we’ve seen so far, let’s highlight five takeaways about this team and what they might mean for the rest of the season, based on some advanced analytics.

Tyrese Maxey is one of the game’s best young talents, and the Sixers’ early struggles shouldn’t necessarily be a reflection on his value as a player. Despite the team’s abysmal overall performance, he actually rates as a positive, according to Estimated RAPTOR (which considers him to have been worth +0.2 points above average per 100 possessions, including +1.7 on offense). This observation is really about the total version of the team that doesn’t include either Joel Embiid or Paul George — leaving Maxey as the lone star leading the roster. (The Estimated RAPTOR metric estimates how many points a player contributes to his team’s offense and defense per 100 possessions.)

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Based on what we’ve seen, that configuration of the Sixers might be one of the worst teams in the NBA. In the first five games, with neither Embiid nor George in the lineup, Philly ranked second worst in net rating (-9.2), ahead of only the dreadful Utah Jazz (-18.4 — yes the Jazz have been horrendous), while checking in at No. 27 on offense and No. 21 on defense. The offensive aspect might not be surprising, given how much is now being put on Maxey’s plate (and basically his plate alone — see below), but Nick Nurse’s swarming defenses have usually been able to compensate for his team’s offensive shortcomings at the other end of the court. So it’s concerning to see a subpar defense from this group, considering how much Philly might rely on the Maxey-only version while managing the workloads of both Embiid and George.

Without his fellow stars, Maxey’s usage rate was up to 32.8% — one of the largest year-over-year increases in the league — and his efficiency struggled to keep up. His true shooting percentage dipped from 57.3% last year to 50.3% this year before George made his debut on Monday night (league average is 57%). And given the fact that, among Philly regulars, only Kelly Oubre Jr. (25.1%) and rookie Jared McCain (25.8% while playing 12.8 minutes per game) also have usage rates above league average, Maxey was basically tasked with the bulk of scoring and offensive creation while surrounded by a group of role players who haven’t consistently been able to execute what they do best.

If we look at the combined Estimated RAPTOR ratings for players other than Maxey, Embiid and George, who slides into the Tobias Harris slot as the team’s designated third star at forward, every other regular on the team last year collectively averaged a -0.7 overall rating per 100 possessions, including a -1.1 mark on offense and +0.3 figure on defense.

This year’s supporting regulars are down to a -1.9 overall rating per 100, checking in at -1.1 on offense and -0.8 on defense. In other words, even after accounting for the absences of Embiid and George (to the best extent we can at the moment) and Maxey’s increased workload, the rest of the roster is playing worse than last year’s supporting cast did, with defense being the main culprit.

We mentioned Nurse’s trademark aggressive defense earlier — and while the overall results haven’t been all that good yet, the building blocks are still there for this defense to come around sooner or later. And the same goes for the reliable ball-control offense that had the league’s lowest turnover rate last season.

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According to SportRadar data, the 2024-25 Sixers rank better than 15th in only nine major statistical categories (out of a possible 35). But those nine categories include turnover differential per game (No. 3), fewest opponent steals per game (tied for seventh), steals per game (10th) and fewest turnovers per game (12th). Philly also ranks No. 2 in opponent turnover rate (16.1% of possessions) and No. 12 in lowest turnover rate on offense (12.2%). And only the Lakers have a better ratio of free-throw attempts per field-goal attempt (0.336).

In that sense, then, the statistical skeleton remains from the factors that made the Sixers a dangerous team when they were at their best under Nurse last season.

The flip side of the few categories in which the Sixers stand among the top half of the league are a host of areas where they check in among the league’s worst. Remember how we said SportRadar tracks 35 major ranking categories? The Sixers rank 23rd or worse in well over half of them (20 stats).

And many of those categories underscore just how critical Embiid’s presence is to this team, given how bad Philly has been without him. The worst categories for these Embiid-less Sixers? Opponent FG% (30th), rebound differential per game (30th), defensive rebounds per game (30th), and assists per game (30th), with opponent blocks per game (29th), total rebounds per game (29th), and field goal percentage (29th) checking in only slightly ahead. (They also rank just 25th in three-point percentage.)

Embiid is a four-time Defensive Player of the Year finalist and three-time All-Defensive Team choice, in addition to being the league’s sixth-most prolific defensive rebounder and 12th-ranked shot-blocker over the previous five seasons. So his absence obviously is going to severely damage the team’s ability to protect the rim and hit the defensive glass. But even the poor passing and shooting rankings reflect how much of a difference a healthy Embiid makes: He actually led the 2023-24 Sixers in assist rate, ahead of Maxey, and his .388 three-point percentage ranked third among players who attempted at least 100 shots from downtown.

When Embiid plays, his fingerprints are on literally everything the Sixers do well. But he also stands out in absentia with how bad they look without him.

Having said all of that, the full-strength Sixers remain one of the league’s biggest mysteries. We still haven’t ever seen Embiid, George, and Maxey on the court in Sixers uniforms together, and we’ve seen only two preseason games and Monday’s loss to the Suns with George and Maxey. The tantalizing on-paper ceiling of this Big Three is that of a championship core if the trio can be ready for the playoffs — and that is still 5½ months away.

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The biggest question might just be what kind of position the Sixers will find themselves in by the time the spring does come around. The poor start has already dropped their playoff and title odds from 76.8% and 4.2% (respectively) in preseason to 60.3% and 2.1% in my composite forecast model, and while a star-driven version of this team at full power could easily make that back up and then some, we still don’t really know how often that configuration of the Sixers will end up being deployed.

One thing seems safe to say: The more games that Philly rolls out Maxey and the role players without any additional stars — the bad version of the Sixers we’ve seen to start the season — the more those odds will drop.