The next two weeks could determine if the Sixers are buyers or sellers at the Feb. 6 NBA trade deadline.
The 2024-25 NBA season hasn’t gone according to plan for the Sixers, to say the least. Heading into Tuesday’s game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, they sit 11th in the Eastern Conference with a dismal 15-22 record. They’re two games behind the 10th-seeded Chicago Bulls for the final spot in the East play-in tournament.
The Sixers still have time to make up ground. The No. 7 seed Miami Heat are in the midst of a standoff with Jimmy Butler that isn’t guaranteed to get resolved by the Feb. 6 NBA trade deadline. The No. 8 seed Detroit Pistons just lost third-year guard Jaden Ivey for the year due to a horrific leg injury. However, the Sixers are already five games behind the No. 6 seed Milwaukee Bucks for the East’s final guaranteed playoff spot.
While the play-in tournament could help the Sixers sneak into the postseason, they’d likely be headed for a first-round matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers or Boston Celtics. And there’s no guarantee that they’ll even make it into the play-in tournament at this point.
Fourteen of the Sixers’ next 15 opponents currently sport winning records. They have five back-to-backs between now and the trade deadline, starting with Tuesday’s game against the Thunder and a home showdown Wednesday against the New York Knicks. After that, they head on a three-game road trip against the Indiana Pacers, Bucks and Denver Nuggets before returning home to host the Cavaliers.
The Sixers do have a six-game homestand leading up to the trade deadline, but all six of those opponents—the Los Angeles Lakers, Sacramento Kings, Nuggets, Celtics, Dallas Mavericks and Heat—are currently above .500. If the Sixers can’t even beat the injury-ravaged New Orleans Pelicans and Orlando Magic, what hope do they have of staying afloat during that stretch?
The obvious caveat is that Joel Embiid has been sidelined for the past four games. He’s already been ruled out against OKC, but that may be because Wednesday’s game against the Knicks is nationally televised and the Sixers don’t want to eat a $250,000 fine. If he returns against the Knicks and is able to stay on the floor over the next few weeks, perhaps the Sixers can salvage what’s left of what’s increasingly looking like a lost season.
Head coach Nick Nurse recently hinted that Embiid could begin playing back-to-backs at some point, which would go against The Plan from earlier in the season. At this point, it’s fair to wonder whether that would do more harm than good. One of the only ways to make this season worse would be if Embiid suffered a major injury while trying to drag the Sixers back up the standings. (They owe their top-six-protected 2025 first-round pick to the Thunder, but they should be treating that as a sunk cost.)
If (when?) the Sixers get destroyed over the next few weeks, it could determine their direction ahead of the Feb. 6 NBA trade deadline. There’s no sense in mortgaging their remaining draft capital for win-now pieces if they don’t have legitimate championship aspirations this season. The Sixers do have KJ Martin’s balloon deal and up to four first-round picks to dangle, but they also don’t necessarily have to trade Martin by the deadline. They could always revisit those scenarios over the offseason, when they might have more options at their disposal.
If the Bulls conduct a long-overdue fire sale ahead of the trade deadline, the Sixers might be able to sneak into the No. 10 seed no matter how these next few weeks go. But if they can’t start stringing some wins together soon, they could fall out of the race for even the play-in tournament.
Just as we all expected heading into the year, right?
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Salary Swish and salary-cap information via RealGM.