Hey there, Last Night In Basketballers — I am, as I do every year, re-appropriating the Three Things I Noticed on League Pass format to preview the upcoming season. Instead of three things I noticed, it’ll be something more along the lines of three things I’m looking forward to, interested in, or want to see. Some of them might be narrative-based, some might be stats, and some might include video. But they'll all be focused on the 2026-27 campaign.
The schedule for those posts will be as follows (podcasts previewing each division with Mo Dakhil are in parentheses):
- Atlantic Division (BOS, BKN, NYK, PHI, TOR) (Podcast)
- Central Division (CHI, CLE, DET, IND, MIL) (Podcast)
- Southeast Division (ATL, CHA, MIA, ORL, WAS) (Podcast)
- Pacific Division (GSW, LAC, LAL, PHX, SAC) (Podcast)
- Northwest Division (DEN, MIN, OKC, POR, UTA) (Podcast)
- Southwest Division (DAL, HOU, MEM, NOP, SAS) (Podcast)
So without further ado, let's get to the Philadelphia 76ers, who are the buzziest team in the NBA this season.
I wrote pretty much everything I have to say about this team when covering the LeBron signing, so I will post some excerpts here, along with some additional commentary.
The offense, a fascination
As I wrote:
-I cannot wait to see how this all works offensively. Obviously, everyone and their mother has already been talking about the usage rate issue. LeBron, Embiid, Maxey, and Jaylen Brown combined for a usage rate of 126.3% last season. That... does not work on the court, and it doesn't even account for VJ Edgecombe, who looked like a potential future star during his rookie year. The hierarchy that develops is going to be one of the most interesting parts of the entire season. It's unfortunately not that difficult to see Edgecombe getting lost in the shuffle here and being turned into a glorified spot-up shooter, though, which would be a shame considering all he showed last season. It's also not difficult to see the offense being less than the sum of its parts if it turns into a your turn/my turn type of unit. Speaking of...
-Do we trust Nick Nurse to be creative enough to figure it all out? There was a time where he was arguably the NBA's most flexible and creative coach, but that was mostly on defense. Offensive creativity in particular hasn't exactly been his specialty over the years. The talent on hand obviously makes it easier but he has a really interesting challenge in front of him when it comes to offensive design, and I will be watching very closely to see how he handles it. The formula for these guys is going to have to be elite offense and good-enough defense, probably, but do we think he can build a truly elite offense? The Sixers were 17th in offensive rating last season. They obviously added some offensive firepower here this offseason but is it enough to jump into the top three-to-five in the league? I'm not sure about that.
-These guys are going to be an absolute terror to deal with in transition. Between Maxey, Edgecombe, Brown, and LeBron, there is just too much speed and power for opponents to deal with. Embiid could almost just wait on the defensive side of the floor for 5 seconds before coming down and joining the play because of how dangerous all of those guys will be on the break. It's going to be really fun.
-Maxey should almost certainly still be at the controls of the halfcourt offense more often than not; he's the best player on the team. But he's also by far the best shooter on the team (and shooting could be a minor concern in the starting lineup considering none of Edgecombe, Brown, or LeBron is necessarily a plus spot-up three-point shooter yet), and using him as a roving shooting threat, Steph Curry-style, with LeBron as the primary playmaker at the top of the floor might be preferable to just having him run a million pick and rolls because of the ways it'd affect the geometry of the offense. Maxey is a speed demon and chasing him away from the ball is incredibly difficult, and you have to stay attached to him as he comes around screens. Use LeBron or Embiid or even Brown to set those screens and you put the defense in a lose-lose situation.
I was maybe a little bit too low on how this offense could perform, looking back on that write-up. There is just so much talent. Unless Nurse really fails in the offensive creativity department, I find it very hard to believe they won't at least be a top-8 or so offense. Whether they can get into the top 3-5 is, however, probably going to depend on Nurse turning the team into at least the sum of its incredible individual parts offensively.
The defense, a concern
As I wrote:
-There are some pretty obvious concerns on defense here. Transition and rebounding are the two biggest ones, I think. You've got a pair of guys who don't (or can't) always get back on defense in LeBron and Embiid, and Maxey and Edgecombe are small enough that teams that get out on the break can kind of go through them on their way to the rim. Brown is going to have a huge role in the transition defense, but he's going to want to have a huge role in the offense and those things can't be mutually exclusive. He's got to do both, and on the nights where he isn't as involved in the offense, he can't let that affect the defense. The rebounding issue on the defensive side is one I'll definitely be watching closely. Embiid isn't an elite defensive rebounder anymore. LeBron and Brown are average-ish positional rebounders at this stage, and neither Maxey nor Edgecombe is a great rebounder. I think the Sixers could get hurt on the glass on occasion.
-Edgecombe is probably going to be the primary point-of-attack defender. He's a little bit slight at only 180 pounds but he's an absolute dawg and will almost surely give everything he has to the role now that it's probably going to be his biggest contribution to the team on a nightly basis. Brown is at his best when you just give him the opposing team's best forward and ask him to lock them down. That's going to have to be a consistent thing this year, because 42-year-old LeBron can't be tasked with those tough individual assignments too often.
I'm still worried about the defense, largely for the reasons I listed here, but also for one I'll get into below. The question is whether they can be good enough offensively for it not to matter during the regular season, and then whether their guys can turn up the heat top a top-10 level during the playoffs. I'm a bit more skeptical on the latter front than the former for several reasons, including...
Joel Embiid, the key
As I wrote:
-So much rides on whether Embiid can recapture the defensive form that he had 3-5 years ago. If he's defending like he did during the playoffs, things are going to get pretty bad. He was a traffic cone during that Knicks series. He can't move very well in space anymore, so he needs to completely wall off the paint and the Sixers have to execute the help schemes to perfection when he's in drop coverage against pick and rolls. The help defense and secondary rim protection role is going to fall to LeBron a lot of the time because Brown isn't the best away from the ball and Maxey is a liability size-wise (he can get in passing lanes, though, which helps a lot on the perimeter), but his effort in that department can wax and wane during the regular season because he knows he has to save himself for the playoffs. So again, the Sixers are going to be depending on bench guys to do some pretty heavy lifting defensively. That's less than ideal, probably. If Embiid can throw things back to a few years ago, though, the combination of him, Edgecombe on the ball, Brown on the wing, LeBron in help (during the playoffs), Maxey in passing lanes (but not anywhere else), and even Wade as a Swiss army knife is a pretty damn good one.
Embiid also obviously has a significant role to play offensively, but I'm interested to see how much of a post-up hub he actually is compared with the rest of his career. Given all the perimeter talent on hand, it doesn't necessarily seem like he's going to be as much of a focal point as he's been before. If that's the case, then how is he going to get his buckets? He's a good pick-and-roll player, too, and at his most effective when he rolls to the nail and isolates from there. He should be able to play off each of the perimeter guys in the action, but it feels like some of his biggest impact might come as a guy who draws attention rather than capitalizes on one-on-one opportunities like he has for most of his career.
