The Philadelphia 76ers didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree; they exist in the context of all in which they’ve lived and what came before them. Over the last decade, the Sixers have been felled by a series of unfortunate events: a GM defending roster moves (and collar sizes) through a network of burner Twitter accounts; Joel Embiid’s Bell’s Palsy foiling a playoff run; back-to-back number one picks yips-ing themselves into oblivion. A prized prospect nearly dying when the team fed him a sesame seed. Tobias Harris. But now, with Paul George in tow, the Sixers can dream of a future bright enough to redeem their past.
By successfully shooting the moon to poach George from the Los Angeles Clippers, the Sixers have added perhaps the most Sixers-coded player imaginable: An All-NBAer who splits the difference between achievement and underachievement. George has more Midichlorians than just about anybody in basketball history. At his best, George is limitless. He’s an elite defender and a better shooter, a 6'8 forward who handles the ball with the easy elusiveness of a white lie. Even his main weakness—his playmaking—feels more like a stylistic flourish than a true deficiency. If you could score like George, you wouldn’t feel like passing either.
Across three teams and 14 seasons, George has thrived, no matter the role. In Indiana, he led the Pacers to back-to-back Eastern Conference Finals as their precious front man. With the Thunder, he honed his scoring instincts playing next to Russell Westbrook. During his five seasons as a Clipper, he modulated his usage depending on the circumstance, shifting on or off the ball as needed. Last year, he put together the best shooting season of his career alongside Kawhi Leonard and James Harden.
Moreover, George, Embiid and Tyrese Maxey aren't just the league’s most talented trio, but also potentially its most harmonious. Like common chord progressions for beginner guitar, they can forever combine and recombine to create new possibilities. Between the three of them, every offensive weapon is available. Maxey and George are top-flight pick-and-roll ball-handlers (87th and 94th percentile league-wide, respectively, per NBA.com) while Embiid is the most dominant interior scorer this century. Whereas other hastily-assembled superteams are bogged down by no, after you awkwardness, the Sixers’ stars could have a multiplicative effect on each other. All three can screen for one another. They’re all excellent shooters. Only a handful of teams have the means to contain George, Embiid or Maxey individually; none have the bandwidth to contend with them.
And yet, the Sixers’ offseason triumph necessitates a qualifying “and yet.” Namely, the only reason that Philly was able to nab George was that the Clippers deemed him too unreliable to fully max out. Although George played 74 games last year, he sat out nearly a third of the Clippers’ regular season games over the past five seasons and was injured for two of their last three postseason appearances. Similarly, when he suits up, he’s been an unremarkable playoff performer, winning just three playoff series over the last 10 seasons. There’s something deeply frustrating about his game, a sense that he’s withholding the full scale of his gifts and simply meting out samples.
As such, these next few seasons in Philly will carry a whiff of mortality. For years, the Sixers’ schizoid pivoting (and subsequent pivoting from their initial pivots) has been enabled by Embiid. The Sixers mostly succeeded in maintaining their perch near the top of the Eastern Conference because Embiid made it impossible to fail. Now, though, after committing $212 million to the 34-year-old George to pair with their 30-year-old centerpiece, Philly no longer has the privilege of an endless horizon. Embiid and George are closer to the end of their careers than the start. If Embiid doesn’t win soon, he probably never will.
In this sense, George’s decision to join Embiid in Philly is representative of the angst of the NBA’s superstar class and those who employ them. Players of this caliber have never had so much control on the court but so little control over how they’re perceived; would-be contenders have never had so much pressure to win but so little patience to do so. Within the flattened parameters of ringz culture, George and the Sixers need one another, lest they reach the point where almost curdles into never.
Together, Embiid and George face the challenge of becoming more than memes. Two of the most ridiculed players in the league, they’re victims of how the traditional modes of myth-making and narrative-shaping have been defanged and replaced by something vicious and untamable. Salaries are determined by the media; legacies are litigated daily on social media. Whereas Nike once pumped out influential, focus-grouped ad campaigns, Embiid and George are at the mercy of performative trolls who delight in deeming them floppers and droppers. To the BrickMuses and Hater Centrals of the world, good games are flukes and bad games are moral failings.
As the league’s most Online team, the Sixers are so freighted with anxiety and lore that they almost feel doomed from the start. After all, Embiid and George are chronic playoff scofflaws; they are injury-prone. Even at full strength, there’s no guarantee the Sixers are better than the Bucks or Knicks, let alone the Celtics. A lot has to go right just for the Sixers to stave off elimination from Mothers’ Day until Memorial Day.
Still, this should be the best and most cohesive team that the Sixers have ever put together around Embiid. The team works—the players are good and, crucially, they’re good together. There’s reason to believe that the Sixers’ starters are potent enough to buoy their bench, that a decade of tortured Process Trusting can give way to successful results. That it’s possible to discover what can be, unburdened from what has been.
