This is what I saw.
Advertisement
A team without answers
We’re going to start in a strange place to open the recap of a game against a 44-win Spurs team: Andre Drummond. The veteran center hasn’t been good for most of the last few months, but on Tuesday night he showed everything that’s wrong with this team in a three- or four-minute drive.
Drummond’s job in this game was as simple as making Victor Wembanyama work on either (and preferably both) ends of the court. But that requires the focus of a role player in that role, the understanding to do your job and not get dragged into some kind of larger one-on-one battle with a player much better and much younger than you. He defends hard, rebounds, plays opportunistic basketball around the rim and sets tough screens. What we got instead was a stretch of the second quarter in which Drummond decided to make Sixers-Spurs about his own personal battle with Wembanyama, knocking down four 3-pointers in the first half and missing every single one of them, one of them almost completely missing the rim from the right wing. He, for some reason, found himself in a insult battle with the fiery Frenchman, who was happy to bark in Drummond’s face after cashing in a three with Drummond sinking toward the hoop.
I wouldn’t mind Drummond trying to “seize the moment” by playing an aggressive offense against Wembanyama if it had come with a concentrated and determined effort in defence, but he was as lazy and cynical in that regard as he has been for most of the last 12 weeks. I didn’t know how to cover Wembanyama with or without help. If he played well, Wembanyama would advance him and kick to open shooters in the corners while the help invaded the center. When Drummond went down, Wembanyama punished him for giving him extra space. As a helper, Drummond was brutal, uninterested in diving to the rim and often throwing punches in the air instead of trying to slide into favorable positions.
Advertisement
Here’s a fun stat alert, courtesy of my ALLCITY friend Tim Cato: Drummond became the second player in NBA history to start a game, play less than five minutes total, and shoot the ball seven times.
And Nick Nurse’s response was… to leave him in the game, until he picked up his third foul midway through the second quarter. Drummond was able to do all this because he was permitted to. And it’s not the first time Drummond has gotten too big in Philadelphia, seemingly unafraid of losing his spot in the rotation. That was it for Drummond that night, and I have to wonder right now, why wait until now?
Anyway, focusing too much on one guy misses the real point. Drummond feeling that having the rope to completely hijack the game is a symptom of a directionless style and structure the Sixers have chosen. When comparing Philadelphia’s setup to San Antonio’s setup, there was a night and day difference, with the Spurs pinging the ball down the court and constantly moving without the ball as the Sixers tried to win in isolation time and time again.
The Spurs, if Tuesday’s meeting didn’t make it clear, come up with ways to get everyone involved and recruit players with multiple skills to fall back on (including defense!) if their main things go wrong. The Sixers have limited players who break down while standing still or going side-to-side on dribble handoffs on offense, giving up open threes with excessive blindside help on the other end. Humiliating losses begin to pile up, inspiring questions about what the foundation may be like. this unstable after lessons should have been learned following the 2024-25 debacle.
Advertisement
The talent gap on Tuesday was very obvious, of course, but we’re already 61 games into the season, and there have been very few moments where you’ve thought, “Wow, the Sixers sure did something inventive” to describe a quarter, a game or a stretch of the season. They’ve been pretty good because the high-level talent is pretty good, and one of the ugliest watches in basketball when a less talented group has to try to play the same style their stars are winning games with.
No one needs to explain to me how important Joel Embiid is to the Sixers as a basketball team and as an organization. I don’t need to be reminded that Paul George is a huge jerk for receiving a 25-game suspension related to the league’s anti-drug policy. But I don’t see it as an impossible ask for the Sixers to have an identity without those two players that goes beyond rampant over-help on defense and relentless isolation play on offense. One of the key tasks Nick Nurse was asked to tackle after last season’s dismal slog was to develop a plan and identity when the veterans are out. They thought they had done it on sunny October days and fell flat on their faces when asked to do something for themselves in 2026.
One could reasonably point the finger at the front office for not improving this team at the deadline, trading Jared McCain for future-focused assets in a move that effectively said “later is more important than now.” Morey’s message to fans was that fans had to be pretty satisfied with how they looked when healthy, ignoring that they needed to maintain that with a cast of characters led by injury-plagued stars, all while trading a fan favorite that the public was willing to be patient for. It’s hard to ignore, of course, that the head coach couldn’t find much use for McCain before the second-year guard immediately began producing in a bench role for the reigning champions and current No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, on a team with more guard depth than Philadelphia has to offer.
The Sixers didn’t do anything right in this game. There’s nothing they’ve done right lately other than including Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey. That seems bad for a team that continues to move toward a potential play-in battle as time runs out on the regular season.
Advertisement
VJ Edgecombe injured
The other major factor in the Spurs’ blowout was a miserable start for Philadelphia’s young defense. With the fan base heavily invested in Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, plenty of excuses can be made for poor shooting outings and disappointing starts to games, relying on injuries and the rest of the roster as excuses. So let’s be clear: They were terrible on their own to start this game against San Antonio.
Edgecombe had an absolute nightmare attacking Spurs, and not for lack of trying. It may have been a little also Preparing for this meeting with a Western Conference contender that boasted the most recent Western Conference Rookie of the Month, with Edgecombe hunting his shots early and missing all of them except for a dunk in transition. Even when he was able to create separation for what looked like an easy mid-range jumper with Wembanyama far from close, Edgecombe missed badly, adding to a pile of bricks for the team.
Tyrese Maxey was at least able to improve some stats in the third quarter after hitting a pair of 3-pointers after halftime, but I find it remarkable how willing people are to excuse his horrendous starts simply because he’s available more often than Embiid and George. He arrived unfocused on the defensive end, playing an unnecessarily risky or disinterested defense.
Advertisement
Talk about going from bad to worse. At the end of a miserable half for the backcourt, Edgecombe was fouled by Carter Bryant and fell hard to the woodwork, limping to the free throw line before taking off for the rest of the night. We’ll see if that was just a precautionary measure in case of a blowout or a sign of a bigger problem, but it was the icing on the cake of steaming poop for the Sixers against the Spurs.
Other notes
– I guess Cam Payne shot well in the first half.