Sixers fans were sold a dream, one they bought into wholeheartedly. The past dozen years of Philadelphia basketball has provided the type of promise and All-Star talent that had been sorely missing for a team that was previously irrelevant, but the Sixers, as they stands, appear no closer to winning a title with their current core as they did when the Process started way back in 2013.
The talent is there. They have Joel Embiid. They have Paul George. They have Tyrese Maxey. That's fantastic, but it's simply not working. The team has lost nine straight games. Embiid's career feels increasingly in jeopardy due to the injuries that have plagued him since his collegiate days at Kansas. Paul George is pausing his podcast work to lock in and compete for a championship when the team is nearly 20 games below .500. Maxey is coming off an 0-for-10 day from three at Madison Square Garden and has his own injury alignments at the moment.
Where do they go from here?
The Sixers were beyond stuck in the post-Allen Iverson era, which is what made the Process so tantalizing, a plan to slingshot this team back to contention that hardcore fans had been clamoring for repeatedly. Homegrown All-Stars have played here since. There have been some electric playoff moments that have ignited the Wells Fargo Center in a way unseen since the Answer himself. There's certainly more to cherish as of late. That 2018 run, the team arriving slightly ahead of schedule, was magical. Even before they all split town, Ben Simmons, Jimmy Butler and James Harden all delivered performances where it was easy for the Philadelphia faithful to imagine its first Sixers parade in roughly four decades.
That was all great and everyone was happy, but the Sixers have three max players and the Eagles have won a game more recently than them.
I don't know. I just don't know.
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If everyone was simply a general manager in NBA 2K, they would trade George and Embiid for whatever they could this summer. The harsh reality is that those guys can't be moved. They're on massive, cost-prohibitive contracts. George is a shell of his former All-NBA self. Embiid's injury concerns speak for themselves and the franchise may still be reluctant to trade the player who's been the face of the organization for years, holding onto the slightest non-zero chance that he could put together a healthy playoff run with a decent enough supporting cast to break through.
None of that is happening, but when you run a professional basketball team, you have to grasp some sort of hope, I guess.
The hilarious turn is that this team needs to tank in order to retain their top-six protected pick and try to nab another building block to go alongside Maxey and Jared McCain, yet another promising rookie whose first NBA season was derailed due to injuries, and prepare for a world where Embiid is no longer the focal point or even an active participant on this team. That does not take away from what the big man has meant to the team, the hope he gave the fan base, nor his scoring titles and his MVP win. It's just the sorry state of things in this city's hoops scene. The team is tanking just by being injured, overmatched and outright bad rather than the "method to the madness" approach of tanking the Sixers took during the early Process years.
Flashback to February 2015. Sixers fans were rooting desperately for losses. It's now February 2025 and the same is true once more.
Maybe the draft lottery gods take pity on this franchise once more, they land a top pick and someone like Cooper Flagg or Ace Bailey radically alters the Sixers' future with a few bounces of some ping pong balls. Other than that miraculous outcome, there is no quick fix for this team. There is no obvious long-term fix if we're being honest with ourselves. Again, a championship feels as far away now as it did when Doug Collins was still patrolling the sidelines right before the Process itself began. That's the brutal nature of the NBA. It's harder to win in this league than any other and Sixers fans will unfortunately be dreaming of that, instead of experiencing it, for years and years to come.
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