What is the Sixers Ceiling this Year?

We've reached the 50-game mark of the 2020-2021 season. In this truncated 72-game sprint, that puts us over 70% of the way through the schedule. That deep in, I feel like it's a good time to give my thoughts on what this Sixers team is really capable of this year. At 34-16, the Sixers are atop the Eastern Conference. It's a tenuous grasp on pole position--the Brooklyn Nets share the same record, but Philly holds the tiebreaker as things stand, and the Milwaukee Bucks (32-17) are 1.5 games back--but first place is first place is first place.

The team's identity clearly rests on the defensive end, where it is second leaguewide in defensive rating (107.8). Offensively, they are solid if unspectacular (112.6 offensive rating, 14th overall). That all adds up to a +4.8 net rating which puts them sixth. Now recent history says that NBA champions have to hold top-10 marks in both offensive and defensive rating, but chuck that out the window for now. Basically, this is all to say the numbers paint the Sixers as an upper echelon team. This is not surprising or new--the Sixers have been a high-end regular season team for four seasons now--but it does work well as a jumping off point. And it's also good that I got the numbers out of the way early, because that's the last you'll see of them in this article.

This piece is all gut feeling.

And honestly, I'm struggling a bit.

On the one hand, the the Eastern Conference is unremarkable at best. Projecting the Sixers to hold onto at minimum the 2-seed virtually guarantees a cakewalk to the Conference Finals, which would be their first since 2001. After the three contenders mentioned above, only three teams even have a winning record, and just barely so (the Atlanta Hawks and Miami Heat, both 26-24, rest at 4th and 5th in the conference, with the Charlotte Hornets a half-game back at 26-25). The first round will of course match the Sixers up with one of the victors of the play-in tournament. That group is probably headlined by the Boston Celtics, but something is seriously amiss with them this year, so we'll toss them out of the equation. After that, we're looking at a pool of the Chicago Bulls, Indiana Pacers, New York Knicks. The Knicks are an awesome story, but...no. The Bulls...nein. The Pacers...nyet. The occasionally frustrating inconsistency of the Sixers might leave room for perhaps one upset loss in a series against any of them, but that would be it.

Moving on to the Semis, a fully healthy Heat with the addition of Victor Oladipo to the excellent Bam Adebayo-Jimmy Butler tandem is interesting, but the regression of key cogs like Duncan Robinson and Kendrick Nunn, combined with the rollercoaster experience that is Tyler Herro leave this roster miles from threatening a stunning run to the Finals for the second consecutive year. The Hawks and the Hornets are both fun teams to be sure, but similar to the play-ins, if either lasted longer than a gentleman's sweep at the hands of the Sixers, it would be a remarkable achievement.

If the Nets were able to leapfrog the Sixers, then a date with the Bucks would be on deck. Let's talk about that for a second. Milwaukee is once again excelling in the regular season. Some systemic changes, thinned depth, and Brook Lopez's regression mean they aren't the stampeding force they've been the previous two years, but by margin of victory and net rating (I promised no more numbers, so just trust my word here), they actually rank as the best team in the East. I can buy that. Giannis Antetokounmpo, despite flying a bit under the radar this year possibly due to a combination of MVP-fatigue and recent playoff struggles, is once again toying with the NBA. Khris Middleton continues to be underappreciated for his stellar two-way contributions on the wing, and freshly-minted $160M man Jrue Holiday gives the team an enormous upgrade over Eric Bledsoe in the backcourt alongside Donte DiVincenzo, who keeps getting better and better. That is a formidable Big-3 and an overall strong starting group and, considering Mike Budenholzer's willingness to finally adjust his schemes a bit this year, perhaps they will finally be able to fully realize the promise they have hinted at in recent years.

Here's the thing though--I just don't see it. There is something hollow and vulnerable about the Bucks that stops me from believing in them, and I just don't feel remotely uncomfortable with the Sixers' prospects of defeating them in a 7-game series. In fact, I don't think the Sixers would need more than six games. I'm not going into any deep analysis here. Maybe I still trust Doc Rivers, despite his own recent postseason struggles, over Budenholzer when it matters most. Maybe I'm really buying Tobias Harris to parlay the best regular season of his career into legitimate playoff success for the first time. Perhaps I'm looking at Ben Simmons and seeing a man possessed on the defensive end pestering all the wings and guards the Bucks throw at him, and even Giannis on a few possessions. It could be that I'm actually feeling good about the Sixers' depth for the first time in a while, particularly once George Hill and his effortless plug-and-play game is added into the fold. Or...what if I'm just looking at Joel Embiid and the confidence and freedom and passion he's played with all season, and I simply don't see him being stopped? Whatever it is, it's very present and very real to me. The Sixers will not lose to that team, they just won't.

And so, at long last, we arrive at the true issue at hand: the Brooklyn Nets. Seriously, I almost considered calling this article 'Can the Sixers Beat the Brooklyn Nets?' but I decided that was a bit of a myopic view of the other thirteen teams in the East. But still...here we are. And let's pretend that I did title my article that: can they? And in my opinion, the answer, unfortunately, is no.

50 games into their season, and the Nets have seen their three-headed monster of Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving together on the hardwood in seven games. That's it. Durant has struggled with lower body injuries and rest days in his first season back from a torn Achilles and has appeared in just 19 games. Irving has been in and out of the lineup for personal reasons and has been banged up here and there himself and missed 15 contests. Not to mention, the dude is a lock to miss around a quarter of each season himself for injuries, and he hasn't had a major one yet this year, so the shoe could drop at any moment.

Steve Nash, offensive savant though he may be, is a rookie head coach. His roster epitomizes the term glass cannon, with a scintillating offense despite the absences of some of its stars and integration of Harden into the flow of things (118.3 offensive rating, second [sorry!]), but a struggling defense (113.8 defensive rating, 25th [last one, I promise!]). Landing LaMarcus Aldridge and Blake Griffin does nothing to help with those struggles, and those signings would have been a lot sexier if those guys were still the All-NBA versions of themselves. They are not.

There are flaws with the Nets, that much is not in question.

But I just don't see it mattering.

That trio of Durant, Harden and Irving will all be locked in gear come playoff time, particularly if, as expected, the Sixers wouldn't meet them until the Conference Finals. And unlike other superstar integrations, those three have pulled it off seamlessly. Even in the small sample time with all three on the court, they seemed to be natural fits for one another, and each has shown a willingness to adjust. Durant and Irving both have Championship experience, and have delivered bucket after bucket on the biggest of stages. They are assassins. Harden himself should be a lot looser since he doesn't have to carry the gargantuan burden he had to with the Houston Rockets for almost a decade, which undoubtedly wore him down come playoff time. Factor in Joe Harris, the perfect floor-warping fourth option to add to a group of offensive studs, and the half-court game for the Nets figures to be unstoppable when it matters most.

And in a vacuum...its Kevin Durant, James Harden, and Kyrie Irving. Each of them has a credible case of being the very best individual shot creator in NBA history at his respective position. That is not an exaggeration. Durant's lethal shooting stroke, guard-like handles, wing-like fluidity and explosiveness--even at 32 coming off a serious injury--and big-man size is still a combination we have not ever seen before or since. Harden's maddening foul-baiting, dribble-the-air-out-the-ball iso possessions have been lessened in Brooklyn, but that has unlocked what has always been tremendous court vision--and rest assured he can still get a bucket in any way he wants when he needs. Irving and his Globetrotter handles and shiftiness and big-shot capability haven't gone anywhere. It is a true embarrassment of riches, and I don't see the Sixers being able to contain them all, or keep pace with them offensively.

Yes, Embiid is brilliant, and I am expecting him to remain fully healthy for the rest of the year--in and of itself not ever a certainty with him--but he is the focal point of a team that still struggles to create offense efficiently without him, even with Harris' terrific performance this season. And until proven otherwise, Simmons' game will always be hampered in the playoffs. Even though the Nets don't have anyone capable of sticking with him, his freight train style of self-sufficient offense runs counter to Embiid does well, and maybe the Nets will simply live with that. Instead of packing the pain, maybe they just wall-off the perimeter, double Embiid, and let Simmons drive for his harmless layups. If it's a race to score, the Sixers will lose.

Don't get me wrong--the Sixers won't just roll over and die in this series, certainly not if they have homecourt advantage. This is a 7-game series for my money, you can book that. But let's focus on that game-7. There's less than five minutes left, and the score is within 3 points either way. With the game on the line, do you trust Embiid, Harris and Simmons over Durant, Harden and Irving? I cannot say that I do.

And so, there it is. A Conference Finals birth that ends in heartbreaking fashion in a game-7. That's what I have in mind. But before I outlined in rather convoluted fashion the course to that fate, I mentioned I was struggling a bit, and now it's time for me to elaborate. I'm struggling with if that is good enough for me. As mentioned earlier, it would be the first Conference Finals birth in 20 years, so that's pretty great. At the same time...I can't help but thinking that that isn't enough. We are four years into the Simmons-Embiid pairing, and one Conference Finals berth is disappointing to me. I look back at recent years...the Raptors won a title in 2019, and the Heat made it last year. Nobody expected that from either of those teams. Everyone expected the Sixers to be a powerhouse.

Now, circumstances change. Nobody expected the Nets to become the world-beating force they are either, and neither the Raptors nor Heat was faced with that type of challenger en route to the Finals. But it just feels to me like this team should really be poised to do something special, and I don't get that impression for whatever reason. That's a problem to me. Maybe Daryl Morey pulls off something brilliant and totally unforeseen in the offseason--that wouldn't shock me at all. But if I'm just talking about this season, then I am left wanting.

I love my Sixers and I am proud of what they are doing right now and what they have the potential to do. But until they do something truly great, I think I'll always be left dreaming bigger.