1 week Ago By Matthew Degeorge
PHILADELPHIA — Daryl Morey began his end-of-season press conference Sunday with an eight-minute mea culpa as a preamble. It was nearly two minutes for every win the team accumulated since the last time he spoke, after the trade deadline in early February. Morey and the 76ers entered the season with a plan – augmenting the star core of Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid with Paul George and a slew of veterans with postseason experience – and the NBA’s third-best odds at winning a championship.
They ended the season with the fifth-worst record in the NBA and clinging to a 64 percent chance of holding onto the top draft pick that such a struggle ordinarily would earn. Embiid started the season injured, as did George. By the time they came back, Maxey was hurt.
On and on it went, through 30 different players, 54 starting lineups and ultimately a 24-58 record, capped by a 5-31 finish that at least accomplished the only tangible success of the season in increasing the odds that they will keep a pick that conveys to Oklahoma City if it falls outside the top six. Morey, to his credit, assumed the microphone after a 122-102 loss to Chicago that even he didn’t clock the final score of and admitted that mistakes were made on the road to Game 82. But given a chance to double-down on the core of the strategy, Morey pushed more chips in, as much a professional opinion as a reflection of unshakable salary commitments.
“Ownership gave us the resources to make aggressive moves this offseason, to put a championship roster around Joel and Tyrese, and sometimes those aggressive moves don’t initially work out,” Morey said. “But we feel good about those three guys, our three All-Stars, going forward. I have to do a better job putting a supporting cast around them.
“I think when you go through a season like this, you need to really take a step back, and everyone needs to find a mirror, starting with myself. What could have gone better? What can I do better? And there’s quite a few things there, I would say.” Among the most obvious starting points is that Morey admitted a miscalculation, stocking the roster with veterans like Kyle Lowry, Eric Gordon and Andre Drummond with an eye toward the postseason.
The veteran bodies never got there, with less dynamism to navigate the 82-game grind. Especially with the fragility of their stars, Morey vowed to be “a much younger, more dynamic group to help us manage through the season” in 2025. Nick Nurse described it as, “we just need to be a little bigger, longer, stronger, more athletic.
” Both he and Nurse will stay on, Morey announced. But changes in the way they go about their business are necessary and in the works. All of it will hinge on the continued commitment to Maxey, Embiid and George.
The 76ers owe Embiid $192 million over the next three years plus a $69 million player option for 2028-29. George wrapped the first year of a four-year, $211 million deal. Neither are going anywhere.
Yet the 76ers are looking to rebound from a season in which Embiid played only 19 games, after 39 in 2023-24. George was limited to 41 outings and Maxey, normally reliable, to 52. The Big 3 started together just 15 times, several of the games ending with one or the other leaving injured or ejected – or as Morey chose to couch it, they missed 154 games combined.
The 76ers were just 8-7 in those games. “I almost feel like they had zero healthy games together,” Morey said. “And I think we haven’t really seen what they can do.
” Embiid had the meniscus in his left knee repaired in February 2024. He returned for the postseason and then played in the Olympics. After resting the knee failed to help in the fall, he finally had an arthroscopic procedure last week to clean it out.
That latest intervention came after examinations by 10 doctors, six in person, before the surgery in New York. Before the meniscus tear against Golden State, he was playing at an MVP level. And the 76ers’ entire project requires them still believing that is possible again.
Morey, correctly, pointed out the handful of positives to be pulled from this year’s trainwreck. The club identified three rookies in Justin Edwards, Justin McCain and Adem Bona who can be rotation contributors next year. Quentin Grimes was a good grab from the trade deadline as backcourt depth.
Guerschon Yabusele, as an unrestricted free agent, is likely to find a better deal elsewhere, but the process of international scouting that led to his acquisition is sound. None of those little victories, though, will ever compensate for the massive loss of Embiid. The Sixers’ championship aspirations reside with the health of the MVP center.
Even the rational, empirical Morey understands that is a question of faith. But it’s the only hand that the 76ers have to play. “We know he’s an MVP-level talent when he’s healthy,” Morey said.
“It’s fair for people to have the question you have. But in my opinion, when you have an MVP-level talent, you need to make aggressive moves to upgrade around that talent in that window. That’s what we did last off season, and we feel good about it going forward.
I think it’s such a unique thing to have a player of that caliber.” Contact Matthew De George at [email protected].
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