PHILADELPHIA — Jabari Walker stepped to the podium at Xfinity Mobile Arena on Tuesday night and attempted to answer what went wrong in a loss to the San Antonio Spurs.
It was like asking the guy whose job it is to fold life vests why the battleship he was assigned to ran aground.
Such was the immensity of failures in a 131-91 loss to the Spurs that having Walker answer for any of it seemed comical. Walker didn’t enter until the 7:29 mark of the third quarter, the last line of bigs thrown at Victor Wembanyama.
The French giant made his way to the bench soon after, his night done at 10 points, eight rebounds, six blocks and four assists, an oblique fragment of his impact on proceedings. Walker, one of the few Sixers with a pulse, scored 20 points in mop-up duty, a season-high output and a fig leaf on the final margin.
Instead of Walker or most of the 76ers who took part in Tuesday’s trouncing, questions should’ve been directed at a front office whose entire roster building plan was, not for the first time, revealed as wholly inadequate.
A shorthanded 76ers team was never likely to beat the Spurs. But to trail by as many as 49 in getting embarrassed by a team whose starters didn’t even need to put in three quarters of work was the latest in a line of unsightly setbacks.
Yes, the 76ers were missing Paul George due to his 25-game suspension for violating the league’s drug policy. The 76ers are 7-7 without him.
They were without Joel Embiid, thanks to a strained oblique suffered in his return from right shin soreness incurred while managing his right knee injury that was sustained recovering from his left knee ailment. Kelly Oubre was absent with an illness. VJ Edgecombe took a hard fall in the second quarter and didn’t play the second half.
Those remnants were never going to beat the second-place team in the Western Conference, recent winner of 11 straight. But they assembled a performance with almost no redeeming qualities, another game to flush, however backed up the pipes have been of late.
It all traces back to the roster’s rickety foundation — that’s not a jab at Embiid’s knees — one that ownership cheaped out on reinforcing to duck the luxury tax and that President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey was neither creative nor assertive enough to improve.
The Sixers last year were torpedoed by a lack of depth at center. Shockingly, with no indications that Embiid would suddenly become more available for work, they’re back there again.
Adem Bona has been serviceable. But he and Andre Drummond have been nowhere near enough to prop up the absence of Embiid, who will have played 33 of 62 games once his absence Wednesday night against Utah is counted.
The 76ers had a fourth center in Johni Broome, who rarely played and wasn’t effective when he did. Despite big numbers in the G League, he’s done for the season with a meniscus tear. He was the 35th pick in last year’s draft, an asset the 76ers can’t afford to fritter away.
The roster deficiencies are myriad.
The team was a ball handler short for several weeks after short-selling Jared McCain, leading to uneven basketball before signing Cam Payne. They started the season at least one floor-stretching, catch-and-shoot wing short.
They lost another in George’s suspension. They did nothing to repair that at the deadline.
It’s an indictment that Justin Edwards, who has spent weeks out of the rotation, remains one of their best spot-up options. After watching the Celtics blister them from deep Sunday and the Spurs’ starters shoot 50 percent from 3-point range, it’s unfathomable that the 76ers built a roster with nothing close to that shooting potential.
“They’ve obviously got one super special player, and then a lot of really good ones,” coach Nick Nurse said of the Spurs. “A lot of athletes, a number of guys that can pick up full-court and pressure, a lot of guys breaking through screens and the physicality that they bring on the defensive end. And then the nice thing they have also is those same guys can all shoot 3s.”
The 76ers could’ve found a better fit at center for cheaper than Drummond. Morey didn’t. Drummond’s outing against Wembanyama was uniquely futile: 5:10 on court despite starting, 1-for-7 shooting including 0-for-4 from 3-point range, three rebounds and a minus-14.
They’re using a roster spot on assistant-coach-in-waiting Kyle Lowry, who has played 63 minutes, none of them consequential. His mentorship, however exemplary, isn’t a luxury the roster can afford.
Looking down the bench on a night where everything cascades, Nurse had no options shy of running up the white flag. That’s a failure that rests squarely on Morey.
The 76ers’ only move at the deadline was to trade away Eric Gordon for roster space and flip McCain for a first-round pick and three second-rounders. Leave aside that the 2024 first-rounder has averaged 12.5 points in 19.9 minutes with a 43.1 percent 3-point shooting in 11 games for the Thunder. That development owes to the reigning NBA champions being a functional organization and the 76ers being the 76ers.
McCain’s presence wouldn’t have beaten the Spurs, nor would it have prevented embarrassment by the Trailblazers or a pasting by the Knicks. But the 76ers are 4-7 since the deadline.
“It’s the NBA. It is what it is. It’s hard, definitely. The trade deadline was difficult, but it’s life,” Tyrese Maxey said Tuesday. “But we moved on from it, and that’s something that we have to put in our rearview mirror. If we’re going to sit there and dwell on the trade deadline now — I think that was three, four weeks ago — it ain’t going to get us nowhere.”
In the postmortem report, it looks increasingly likely that McCain’s departure will be the accelerant for the locker-room vibe shift after George’s positive test, driven further down by the lack of reinforcements, then Embiid’s latest injury. It may be enough to drive the Sixers from top-four contention into the East’s play-in tournament.
But the ultimate blame falls on an ill-constructed roster wholly incapable of handling adversity like this week’s.
Contact Matthew De George at mdegeorge@delcotimes.com