The 2026-27 Sixers’ paths to offensive greatness are not difficult to picture. 

Health permitting, points should naturally flow for a team projected to start Tyrese Maxey, LeBron James, Jaylen Brown and Joel Embiid with rising star VJ Edgecombe.

How about the other side of the floor? 

Sixers head coach Nick Nurse indicated Wednesday that he expects to have a more diverse defensive approach in the upcoming season. 

“Recently, I don’t feel like I’ve been able to get into my bag of defensive stuff nearly as much as I would like to,” Nurse said following Day 2 of training camp. “I think now we’ve got a little bit more depth, size, athleticism. And it may take us a minute, but I think I’m most excited about that.

“I think we just have the capabilities to understand it, execute it, change on the fly, do multiple things, even if it’s once or twice, and get back to normal. I think that would be the biggest (change).”

Strictly in terms of size and strength, it shouldn’t hurt that the Sixers now have Brown (listed at 6-foot-6, 223 pounds) and James (6-9, 250 pounds). Brown will be tasked with tough defensive assignments.  

“He’s a special talent,” Maxey said of Brown on Monday at media day “I feel like he’s been talking about being a defensive monster this year, how he wants to really, really compete defensively. I know he’ll do that.

“He takes a lot of challenges. I’ve seen him guard me, I’ve seen him guard Joel, I’ve seen him guard wings. We’re definitely going to need him on that end.”

Off the bench, Dean Wade and Dominick Barlow are both 6-9 forwards who embrace dirty work. 

“I think we can do a lot of different things between Bron, myself, Dean,” Barlow said Monday. “We have a lot of big forwards that can switch and do a lot of stuff defensively. I think that’s going to be exciting.” 

Maxey has been impressed so far by Wade’s game … and stature. 

“I didn’t know he was this tall,” Maxey said Wednesday in the middle of praising Wade’s 3-and-D skill set. “You play against a guy two or three times a year, but you don’t really realize until you see a guy every day. He’s really tall.”

According to Maxey, the Sixers haven’t yet progressed beyond “doing the basics” on defense. Everyone will need to grasp the core principles and terminology before Nurse can expand.

Historically, Nurse has liked to play aggressive defense, force turnovers and prosper in transition. He also built a reputation during his Raptors years as a coach that concocted unorthodox schemes to guard specific stars, whether that was a box-and-one, unusual matchups or all-out blitzing. 

The Sixers were middling overall on defense last season, but they did finish with a third consecutive year in the NBA’s top 10 for defensive turnover percentage (eighth in the league at 15.3 percent, per Cleaning the Glass). 

Any defensive plan that creates a high volume of live-ball turnovers should help the Sixers attack in the open floor. 

“If we get stops, then we have a lot of dangerous pieces in transition,” Maxey said. “We’ve just got to share the ball, continue to make plays for each other. That’s the beauty of it. I think in years past, it was hard to pitch ahead sometimes. I dribbled a little bit more than I probably will this year. … We’ve got a lot of ball handlers on this team who can bring the ball up, who can pitch it ahead. 

“I think Nurse has done a good job of emphasizing, ‘Pitch the ball ahead, pitch the ball ahead.’ And at the end of the day, we also have No. 21 (Embiid) trailing. That’s a pretty good option, too.”