Three big unknowns as the Sixers look to avoid disaster: Lowry, Maxey, and the man in the middle

We’re going to find out how much Kyle Lowry has left.

We’re going to find out if Tyrese Maxey is a true superstar.

We’re going to find out if Nick Nurse can cobble together a functional NBA defense without much in the way of functional individual defensive talent.

» READ MORE: How much will Kyle Lowry have left in the tank as a Sixer? And will it even matter?

That’s where things stand for the 76ers now that the midseason music has stopped. The primary objective is to avoid complete disaster. The danger is very real. The Sixers have lost eight of their last 10 games. They have the second-worst defensive rating in the NBA over that stretch. They have a back-loaded schedule brimming with teams that spent the trade deadline getting better rather than scrambling to field a full rotation. On Saturday night, they showed us that they can still beat the Wizards. We don’t know much beyond that.

It might seem strange that a team can go from a borderline 60-win pace to hoping to avoid the play-in tournament, but such is life. The Sixers are very much there. Just look at the lineups they’ve been running out there. When you are missing Nico Batum and De’Anthony Melton, you are missing something much greater.

There is a very narrow path for the Sixers to become some version of the team they were with Joel Embiid. It will require Maxey to become the kind of scorer he has never needed to be. It will require Lowry to be the kind of perimeter defender he was in his prime and has been in spurts since then. If both of those things come to fruition, then all they will need is for Nurse to harness the spare parts at his disposal and prove that a team can play championship-caliber defense without anybody of consequence protecting the rim.

» READ MORE: In the case of the NBA trade deadline, Josh Harris and Daryl Morey have earned the benefit of the doubt

Absent all of that, the best-case scenario for the Sixers is Embiid returning late in the regular season and repeating the Heat’s run from the play-in tournament to the Finals.

Let’s take the questions one by one.

1) Can Maxey become the rarest of the rare: a scorer who is going to score regardless of the defense you throw at him? How close can he come?

Time for a little bit of NBA philosophy. There is a set of elite scorers that numbers somewhere between 15 and 20. Within that set, there is a subset of elite scorers whose elite physical attributes enable them to score regardless of the situation. Embiid, Kawhi Leonard, Nikola Jokić, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kevin Durant, Jayson Tatum, Steph Curry, Jimmy Butler, LeBron James. Most of them have a size/strength combo that enables them to get off their shots regardless of the will or competency of the defense. Curry is superhuman in technical skill, which is why he probably deserves more Greatest of All Time consideration than he usually gets. These are the guys are going to get to their spots and get their looks regardless of the situation or personnel in front of them. The only thing you can do is try to make them work as hard as possible.

Every championship team has one. Every. Single. One. Heck, almost every NBA Finals team has one. Conference finals, too. The ones who don’t have a perfectly formed team around their one still-elite scorer. Devin Booker is elite, but the Suns still knew they needed a guy like Durant.

» READ MORE: NBA deserves blame for Joel Embiid’s latest injury

Daryl Morey knows this as well as anybody. Nurse, too. Remove James Harden from the 2010s Rockets, remove Leonard from the 2019 Raptors — those are the teams the Sixers will be if Maxey is not the scorer that Embiid was. Keep in mind, it took Embiid five seasons to become that player. Frankly, it’s unfair to Embiid to think that Maxey is that kind of player.

Don’t get me wrong. Maxey is great. I’m a charter member of the fan club. But there is a very big difference between scoring 30 points against a defense that knows you are the guy who needs to score 30 points and a defense that is geared toward stopping somebody else. If everything works out perfectly around him, the Sixers can get by with Maxey merely being Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, or DeAaron Fox, or Donovan Mitchell.

2) Can Lowry summon another couple of months of the guy we saw in the playoffs last year?

Lowry is a dog, in the best sense of the word. That’s the biggest reason to hope that he can have a transformative effect on the Sixers’ backcourt. For years, he was the exact guy you’d want to pair with a primary scoring option. It has only been three years since Maxey-for-Lowry was considered a valid trade proposition. That’s an interesting thing to think about now that the Sixers have reportedly agreed to a $2.8 million deal to pair Lowry with Maxey in a desperate attempt to shore up a season that has sprung an MVP-sized hole in its hull. One of the great what-ifs in recent Sixers history involves Lowry and the Game 7 against the Atlanta Hawks in 2021. Obviously, Morey made the right call in hanging onto Maxey. But, then, time horizons are a tricky thing to evaluate. Replace Ben Simmons with Lowry in the Hawks series and what happens?

That said, three years is a long time within the context of a decline phase. The legs and the core are the first things to go. Once they do, you don’t get them back. Lowry was 0-for-18 from three-point range in his last five games for the Heat. The Sixers don’t need him to be a scorer. But they do need him to play functional perimeter defense. Basically, they need him to be the guy he was for the Heat during last year’s NBA Finals run. Combine that with a healthy Melton and Batum and maybe — maybe — the Sixers can lessen the pressure on Maxey to score.

3) Can the Sixers really get away without a big man?

In the nine games since Embiid hit the shelf, the Sixers have the second-worst defensive rating in the NBA. The void won’t be as glaring if Lowry, Melton, and Batum are all healthy and playing up to their potential. But, man, it’s a big void.

“We did go in saying, ‘Let’s see if we can shore that up depth-wise,’ ” Morey told reporters after the Sixers failed to add another center at the trade deadline. “Especially when we have some period with Joel out where depth-wise, we’re a little short. There really were no bigs traded. I was shocked by that. We were aggressive to do that, but they just weren’t available, so it didn’t happen. We’re going to have to continue to be creative.”

The writing is on the wall. The next couple of months are going to be measured by small victories, the most important of which will be each stage of Embiid’s rehab progression.

Forget advancement. Right now, the Sixers just need to survive.