The finger-pointing has started in Philadelphia, where a team that entered training camp with championship aspirations has stumbled to a 2-11 record and had an hour-long postgame team meeting where Tyrese Maxey is calling out 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 Athletic.
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 end has not been healthy, plus how the team has handled Embiid’s absence has already led to a fine from the league. What seemed on paper to be good role-player pickups to go around the big 3 — Caleb Martin, Kelly Oubre Jr., Eric Gordon — have not panned out. How much of that is on Nurse for the schemes he uses— this is the guy who coached a championship team in Toronto five years ago — and how much simply falls to the players?
Fortunately for Philadelphia, it is in the East. Despite the dreadful start to the season, Philly is just three games out of the play-in and four out of the No. 6 seed and avoiding the play-in altogether. There is time to turn the ship around, but even if they do, at this point the 76ers have made their path through the playoffs much tougher — just like a season ago, when they went into the playoffs as the No. 7 seed then got bounced in the first round by the Knicks. When do we reach 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 ending to this campaign.
At that point, the finger-pointing will pick up, but then there could be consequences. For now, Morey and Nurse are safe.
