Nick Nurse Ironically Foreshadowed Problems of 2025-26 Sixers
The NBA Play-In Tournament is looking more and more like an inevitability for the Philadelphia 76ers. The most relentlessly passionate market in professional sports has naturally unleashed the venom on…
The NBA Play-In Tournament is looking more and more like an inevitability for the Philadelphia 76ers. The most relentlessly passionate market in professional sports has naturally unleashed the venom on a struggling team once considered in the top tier of the Eastern Conference.
Some intense Sixers fans will question Nick Nurse, who is far from guaranteed to return for a fourth season in Philadelphia in 2026-27.
However, don’t point the finger at the embattled head coach without first looking back at his inadvertently revealing comments before the season started when he joined 97.5 The Fanatic at Sixers Media Day all the way back in September.
Nick Nurse Foreshadows His Own Problems
The dramatic saga surrounding Joel Embiid sent the 2024-25 season into a 24-58 tailspin. When Nurse spoke during the 2025 preseason, he acknowledged the monumental difficulty a team shoulders with a dominant MVP center on the sidelines. He also emphasized a message about dealing with the adversity of Embiid's injuries.
“We've got to – all of us, myself, staff, players – have to realize that this is a reality. This is a reality of who we are, and I don't think we can let him (Embiid) not being there affect us as much as maybe it has.”
Photo by Elsa/Getty ImagesTyrese Maxey emerged as the franchise’s centerpiece during the first half of the season. His superstar development stole the show while Embiid alternated in and out of the lineup. VJ Edgecombe injected life into the Sixers just months after a truly disastrous finish to 2024-25.
The Sixers have more recently hit a wall, however. They've slipped from a top four team in the East down to Play-In Tournament position.
Consider the second part of the September message with the benefit of hindsight while a shorthanded roster struggles to keep their heads above water in March. Nurse related his former team’s perseverance to the situation in Philadelphia. The pinnacle of the journeyman head coach’s career unfolded in 2019 when he led the Toronto Raptors to an NBA Championship.
“But I will say this too. I feel like it wasn't only him (Embiid) last year. It was always four or five other guys (injured) too... I look back at our time with Kawhi (Leonard). We didn't have Kawhi for 22 games in (2018-19). I think we went 17-5 in those games that he didn't play… It was (Kyle) Lowry and (Fred) Van Fleet. Those guys were out there playing.”
Maxey, Paul George, Eric Gordon, Andre Drummond, and other injured veterans had missed significant time in 2024-25. Replacements on 10-day contracts handcuffed Nurse, a coach determined to maximize the value of lineups at his disposal.
The same nightmare scenario has unfolded this season in an ironic way that Nurse himself couldn’t have imagined.
George began the series of unfortunate events with a self-inflicted wound. Maxey and Kelly Oubre Jr. have joined him on the sidelines. The frontcourt depth behind Embiid has shrunk thinner with Andre Drummond and Adem Bona battling nagging injuries – and even thinner with Jabari Walker and Johni Broome out of the lineup.
The 2018-19 Raptors counted on secondary pieces like Lowry and VanVleet to offset the absence of their best player. The 2025-26 Sixers have conversely resorted to a shell of Kyle Lowry seven years later while Nurse's secondary pieces behind Embiid have vanished from the lineup.
Shorthanded Sixers Look To Take Control
What can a head coach do to adjust his lineup with the stunning list of contributors off the court?
Nurse’s confidence in Maxey and company without Joel Embiid on the floor unraveled after Christmas. The Sixers had lost 11 of their previous 14 games with the Big Fella out of the lineup before Maxey’s recent hand injury.
Nurse himself wrote in his book Rapture about a coach's job to remain "above the chaos of the game" with the ability to confidently maximize talent despite adversity. The Sixers have left a lot to be desired in that regard this season with underwhelming team defense and a concerning habit of embarrassing blowout losses.
Photo by Colin Newby | BBGI PhiladelphiaThey'll continue to search for solutions despite the injuries. Depth scorers like Quentin Grimes and Justin Edwards led the Sixers to consecutive home wins on March 14 and 15 before a three-game road trip in Western Conference time zones.
However, the front office also exacerbated the stunning list of the injuries with questionable roster construction. Daryl Morey entered the season with aging veterans on the bench despite limited durability, and he made a controversial trade deadline decision to move Jared McCain. The second-year guard would more sensibly fit the role of a primary scoring option than nearly anyone in Philadelphia's available lineup.
While Nick Nurse hasn't led the Sixers to triumphant success in the face of adversity, ask yourself if his shortcomings have led fed the team's flaws with anywhere close to the same magnitude of the (lack of) players available to step on the court.
