ORLANDO, Fla. — The on-paper picture isn’t so sparkling now for a Sixers team widely expected to be one of the Eastern Conference's best before this season.
At 2-10 following Friday night’s NBA Cup loss to the Magic, the Sixers have the NBA’s second-worst record. They rank 30th in offensive rating and 27th in net rating.
The team is 0-2 with the Joel Embiid-Paul George duo. The pair totaled 33 points on 9-for-30 shooting and committed nine turnovers against Orlando. George missed his first eight field goals, Embiid his last eight. Jared McCain was sensational again in defeat (29 points, four assists, no turnovers).
“It’s obviously frustrating,” George said. “No one in here is happy or OK with the start of this season. But 15 seasons (in the NBA) … the season is long. This is not what we expected when we came together, but hopefully, this stretch happens now rather than in the middle of the season.
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“We don’t have anything else but to work harder and to stay poised, and to look out for everyone in this locker room. We’re all in this together. … We know we’ve got to collectively get better. We know that this team has a high ceiling. But we can’t expect that just with who’s on the roster. We’ve got to work and expect for this thing to work.”
There’s many explanations for the Sixers’ severely disappointing start. George has played in six regular-season games since returning from a left knee bone bruise. In his second game this season, Embiid’s level of play plummeted Friday after halftime. Tyrese Maxey is sidelined by a right hamstring strain. Along with George, Caleb Martin, Guerschon Yabusele and exceptional rookie McCain are among the team’s new rotation pieces.
It’s been very hard for the Sixers to develop reliable rotations, go-to plays and good habits. And they can’t afford a cascade of mistakes and missed jumpers. For over six minutes Friday night, the team stayed on 72 points.
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“I think we were just not organized as we were previously,” Embiid said. “I thought our defense was fine but, starting with me, we started turning the ball over. I had a couple. And offensively, we were just disorganized as far as what to run — indecisive. It’s stuff that we can fix. It seems like it’s every game we have 30 good minutes.
“Especially because we’re not at full strength and I’m not myself yet, it feels like you don’t have a lot of margin for error. Over time, I think we’ll be fine. But we just had a couple turnovers, they went out in transition, and from there, our offense just stalled.”
Can Sixers head coach Nick Nurse find those fixes soon?
The 5-6 Heat are up next Monday night in Miami.
“I think it’s a little bit of what I told them postgame: We’ve got to dig in and get to work,” Nurse said. “We’ve really got to get serious about the execution side of the offense. And we’ve got to figure out what days we can do it — practice days, shootarounds, all those things. … It’s not easy with a whole bunch of new guys and guys coming in and out, obviously, but that’s where we are. So we’ve got to get to work on it for sure.”
The 20-year-old McCain has been the best part of the Sixers’ season so far in a landslide. He started Friday instead of Kelly Oubre Jr. and gave Nurse no reason to second-guess that decision, playing another sweet-shooting, high-energy, unperturbed game.
Over his past four contests, he’s averaged 28.3 points. For the season, McCain is up to 40.3 percent from three-point range and 27 for 27 at the foul line.
Almost everything’s appeared exceedingly natural for McCain besides the losing. After going 27-9 in his one season at Duke, he’s reached double-digit NBA defeats.
“I think just having a calm vibe throughout the team,” McCain said of the Sixers’ approach. “Just having a sense of giving each other grace, that we’re going to have a period like this and we’re going to get back to it.
“So I think just learning from them and knowing that it’s going to be OK. You can be in panic mode sometimes, but these players have been there, done that, so just got to listen to them.”
