After meeting with multiple hand specialists this week, Sixers guard Tyrese Maxey was diagnosed with a tendon injury in his right pinky, according to a statement released by the Sixers. The team told reporters he would be reevaluated in three weeks, which to put it lightly, puts the Sixers’ entire season in jeopardy.
The Sixers initially ruled Maxey out for games against the Cavs on Monday and the Grizzlies on Tuesday, which many took as a positive sign after avoiding a broken hand after colliding with Adem Bona in the final 30 seconds of their latest loss to the Atlanta Hawks. But visits with multiple specialists brought us here, with the Sixers now forced to consider exactly how they are supposed to manage without the team’s most consistently available and healthy player.
Joel Embiid has long been the king of comical plus-minus stats, but it is Maxey who has taken his place as the player driving Philadelphia’s lineups to success. The Sixers have lost minutes without Maxey on the floor by close to 10 points per 100 possessions this year, with Maxey-inclusive lineups +1.5 in the ledger. It is one of the biggest single-player swings for any guy in the league this season, which shows both his effectiveness and the scale of his workload, with Maxey on pace to play the most minutes per game of any player since James Harden eclipsed 38 minutes a night back in 2016.
In the short term, most of Philadelphia’s creative responsibilities will fall on the shoulders of rookie VJ Edgecombe, which is a fun prospect for fans even if it isn’t ultimately a pathway to consistent winning. Edgecombe has been inconsistent as the featured player at the point of attack, swinging between flashes of pull-up scoring and high-level playmaking while also struggling with turnovers and ball-handling. The lack of current shooting available in the lineup will cramp the floor for last year’s No. 3 overall pick, so we’ll see how he’s able to adapt to being the guy at the top of the scouting report in suboptimal circumstances.
If we include Tuesday night’s game vs. Memphis and assume Maxey is back on the floor at the exact moment that timetable lays out, Maxey will miss a minimum of 11 games, including matchups with the East-leading Pistons, the Denver Nuggets, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the surging Hornets and Heat, both of whom stand to benefit in the standings race as the Sixers figure out where to go from here.
The main question, since Paul George’s return from suspension should be set in stone on March 25th, is how quickly Joel Embiid can get back on the floor and exactly how much of a difference he can make coming off his latest oblique injury. Getting Embiid out of game action has likely been good for his shin soreness and taken some wear and tear off of his knees, but whether he’s able to anchor the current lineup to victory is another matter entirely.
Had the Sixers gotten their own pick back from Oklahoma City instead of Houston’s in the Jared McCain deal, perhaps this would be a moot point, as they could freely punt away what looks like another doomed season with a guaranteed reward and some upside at the end. As it stands, they have a series of bad choices to select from. You can’t tank hard enough to get anything beyond a 9.4% chance to keep your own pick, and you can’t change how few games the big three have been on the floor for. They aren’t positioned for either a race to the bottom or a shot at contention, unless Joel Embiid emerges from the ether this weekend and summons the mythical, months-long run Philadelphia has been hoping for since he first took the floor in 2016.
Assuming they end the season what they are and have been — a banged-up, inconsistent, mediocre team — it sets up a pretty fascinating scenario at the end of this season for anyone keeping an eye on potential management changes. Can Nick Nurse be held accountable for another potential lost season with all three of his stars missing chunks of the season? If he can, should that come from Daryl Morey, who chose to commit the future years and dollars to Joel Embiid and Paul George in the first place? If you’re asking me, you can certainly make informed decisions on both of those guys, but it’s unclear what ownership’s view on all of this is until we see how the season actually ends. Maybe this is overdoing it over the last blip before a tremendous flurry.
It’s certainly a bummer, in any case. Maxey has been an All-NBA level player all season and needs to get back on the floor for four more games to keep hope alive there, and though that might not matter to Sixers fans as much as it does the player, it would be a shame to see all his hard work flushed down the drain after he spent most of this season dragging this team toward respectability.
This story is developing.
