The finger-pointing began in Philadelphia, where a team that entered training camp with championship aspirations stumbled to a 2-11 record and had one-hour postgame team meeting where Tyrese Maxey calls his friend Joel Embiid. ‘
A couple of fingers were pointed in that meeting at head coach Nick Nurse — players said they wanted to be coached harder — but despite the start both he and GM Daryl Morey’s jobs are safe, according to a story by Sam Amick, David Aldridge, and Jared Weiss of The Soccer Club.
The Philadelphia 76ers are off to a worse start than anyone in the organization could have imagined, but there are no internal discussions at this point regarding the job status of coach Nick Nurse or president of basketball operations Daryl Morey, multiple league sources told The Athletic.
There’s plenty of blame to go around in Philadelphia, the team with the worst offense in the NBA so far this season. Morey built a top-heavy roster where that critical top wasn’t healthy, plus how the team handled Embiid’s absence has already led to a fine from the league. What appeared on paper to be good role-playing pickups to round out the big 3 — Caleb Martin, Kelly Oubre Jr., Eric Gordon — didn’t happen. How much of that is with Nurse because of the schemes he uses—this is the guy who coached a championship team in Toronto five years ago—and how much is simply down to the players?
Fortunately for Philadelphia, it’s in the East. Despite the terrible start to the season, Philly is only three games out of the play-in and four out of the number 6 seed and avoids the play-in altogether. It’s time to turn the ship around, but even if they do, at this point the 76ers have made their way through the playoffs much more difficult – just like a season ago, when they went into the playoffs when the number 7 seed then got. bounced in the first round by the Knicks. When do we get to a point where Philly has to start playing Embiid and Paul George in back-to-backs because they need the wins?
We’re 13 games into their season, and it’s already hard to see how the 76ers avoid a disappointing end to this campaign.
At that point, the finger-pointing will resume, but then there could be consequences. For now, Morey and Nurse are safe.
