With Tyrese Maxey hurt, the Sixers will have a critical lack of margin for error when Joel Embiid returns

Whenever Embiid finally decides to grace us with his presence, it had better be for good. And he’d better do it with a sense of urgency that matches the situation.

Sixers star Tyrese Maxey is expected to miss at least two weeks with a hamstring injury.Read moreElizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer

by David Murphy | Columnist

Published Nov. 7, 2024, 2:15 p.m. ET

Whenever Joel Embiid finally decides to grace us with his presence, it had better be for good. And he’d better do it with a sense of urgency that matches the situation, which is bordering on critical now that Tyrese Maxey is expected to miss extended time with a hamstring injury.

Maxey, who suffered the injury late in a 110-98 loss to the Clippers on Wednesday that dropped the Sixers to 1-6, has struggled to carry the load with Embiid sidelined. He is averaging a career-high 27.6 points, but with efficiency numbers well below norm (.286 on 11.0 three-point attempts per game, a .473 effective field-goal percentage). A two-week absence would see him miss seven games, three weeks 10, four weeks 13.

In other words, the Sixers may already have played a third of their schedule by the time Maxey returns.

They need Embiid on the court, and they need him to stay there. Only once in the last 20 years has a team made the playoffs after starting 1-6. The last team to go to the conference finals after such a start was the 1993-94 Pacers. Not a great track record!

Granted, the Sixers are in a much different situation than most 1-6 teams from previous years. It would be more fair to compare them to all the teams that went 1-6 and, shortly thereafter, had two superstars rejoin the fray. But there isn’t a filter for that on the database at Basketball-Reference.com. Besides, we’re quickly approaching the point where Embiid’s absence will no longer qualify as short-term.

Fact is, the Sixers will have played more than 10% of their schedule by the time Embiid appears in his first game. There’s still a lot of season left, sure. If this were a 17-game NFL schedule, it would be the fourth quarter of Week 2. But these surely won’t be the last couple of games the Sixers play without two of their Big Three.

Assuming that Embiid returns from his suspension to play against the Knicks on Tuesday, he’ll presumably sit out the following night against the Cavaliers to stick to the plan of avoiding back-to-backs. Likewise with their Dec. 3-4 back-to-back, which Maxey would miss if his hamstring injury sidelines him for a month-plus. Suddenly, we’re up to nine or 10 losses.

The Sixers aren’t the only ones who have struggled out of the gate.

The Bucks, the contenders everybody supposedly forgot about, somehow feel like even a bigger joke than the Sixers, given (a) their 1-6 record, (b) the presence of both of their superstars, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard, and (c) that their only win came against the Sixers on opening night.
The Knicks, heralded as the second- or third-best team in the conference after a banner offseason, have yet to erase the doubts raised by their 23-point loss to the Celtics on opening night. As of Thursday, they had lost two straight to fall to 3-4.
The Magic, everybody’s don’t-sleep-on-me team heading into the season, have lost five straight games to fall to 3-6.

Yet, things sure feel a lot more dire for the Sixers. They are built differently, after all. They have two of the most frequently injured stars in the league. One of them is 34 years old. The other is 30 and playing on a knee that is a perpetual question mark. The Sixers entered the season hoping that their depth and abundance of topline star power would enable them to manage workloads, both within games and between them.

Maxey’s injury is precisely why their bizarre start to the season seemed so ominous. Every game that Embiid and George missed on the front end was one fewer game the Sixers had in their margin for error. Now, it could be pushing Christmas before we see all three of them on the court together.

Whenever that day comes, the Sixers are going to need their Big Three to take some serious collective ownership. The playoffs are what matter, no doubt. As long as the Sixers get there with a healthy trio of Embiid, George, and Maxey, the season will more or less be forgotten.

Still, they are making things awfully difficult on themselves. Last year, the Heat showed everybody the danger in taking the regular season for granted. The Sixers don’t just need to win games for seeding purposes — they need to figure out how to play together. They need time to become a team.

The Sixers can’t afford to take the long view any more. The long view is here. The long view is that Embiid and George are in danger of taking a mulligan in what might be their best swing at the ol’ piñata.