PHILADELPHIA — Nick Nurse hasn’t looked at the standings yet in this 2024-25 NBA season. In part because it’s so early, in part because he knows what they say about a team that has had each member of its Big 3 miss time.
So to start a challenging three-game homestand Sunday night, Nurse isn’t so much looking at the long-term goal of how to prepare his rotation pieces for the eventual returns of Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey, but just trying to do whatever it takes to buck a 1-7 start.
“It gets tough when you’re stringing up losses, no matter how you’re playing or who you’re playing or any of that kind of stuff,” Nurse was saying before the 4-5 Hornets visited the Center. “And I think our guys do need something to hang their hat on or some boost of confidence.”
The 76ers have been dealt — or, by one view, selected — a tough hand. Embiid hasn’t played this season, managing his knee soreness. Paul George missed the first five games, starting twice with Maxey before his hamstring injury. They’ve seen dependable rotation pieces struggle when thrust into larger roles, whether it’s Kelly Oubre’s shooting regression or Andre Drummond’s plus/minus plummet to fourth-worst in the league.
All the while, Nurse has had to walk a tightrope: Install actions and tendencies that will apply when Embiid, Maxey and George are back vs. the bare fight for survival with a roster that on Sunday night included just one available holdover (Oubre) from opening night 13 months ago. The spot in the NBA basement is an indication of how well that has gone.
It’s only eight games. And it would be far more concerning if the 76ers found themselves 1-7 with all their guys present. But the day-to-day battle isn’t so much preparing for when things get better as it is making sure they’re still in touch with the rest of the Eastern Conference when and if that happens.
“I think I find the challenge is you need to accentuate the positives of what these guys can do, when that’s not so easy, when people are banging on them about what they can’t do,” Nurse said. “Our job is to continue to get them in places to do the things they can do and limit those other things a little bit and stay positive.”
That has meant a little ego massaging. Nurse said he’s focused in film work both on “clips that need teaching” but also ones that include things the team is doing well.
There are positive and negative developments on both sides of the equation.
Some of the things the 76ers are struggling with — rebounding, long-range shooting, defensive lapses in transition — will apply when Embiid and Maxey are back. When players like Drummond, Oubre or Eric Gordon, so far a misfit in the 76ers’ rotation, have more support around them, their production should look more like their historical norms.
George’s minutes restriction, which Nurse said was an issue in achieving continuity on the offensive end, could resolve some of the complications. Sticking points like rebounding and spacing are at obvious deficits through the absence of an all-star center.
The list of positives is far thinner, as the win-loss records suggests. But Jared McCain’s early emergence as a rotation piece is certainly one, as is Guerschon Yaubsele’s status as a definite NBA contributor.
Perhaps the push and pull is epitomized by the big men, an obvious area of need sans Embiid.
Yabusele has done OK at center but has been better at the power forward spot. But to play him with Drummond would foist upon rookie Adem Bona more responsibility than he may be capable of at this juncture. It doesn’t help that Yabusele is currently the team’s best 3-point shooter outside of Kyle Lowry at 42.4 percent, an indictment of the 32.6 percent clip at which the 76ers have failed through the first eight games.
“He provides a little more spacing because of a shooting threat, and on top of that, he’s making his own sets of threes at times,” Nurse said of Yabusele. “That’s providing room for others to operate, and he’s producing from behind the line himself.”
Time is the surest remedy that Nurse has at his disposal, time to get players back and practicing together, then learning by doing in games. But its certainty is elusive.
It depends on Embiid’s health holding up. And its clock is already ticking: 82 games minus the nine Embiid has already missed, plus at least two more this week for Maxey out and Embiid’s looming three-game suspension and the handling of 14 further back-to-backs beyond the Tuesday/Wednesday this week against the Knicks and Cavaliers, where the club is determined to limit both George and Embiid.
That leaves 54 chances for a rebuilt roster to learn itself and to win enough games to not just make the playoffs but be in a position to do something there.
It’s early, Nurse knowns, but not too early for urgency.
Contact Matthew De George at [email protected].
