CHICAGO – The 76ers are an enigma.

There’s no other way to describe the team that still has several unanswered questions nine weeks into the season.

Folks will point out that the Big Three of Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid, and Paul George have only played three games together. They remain winless in those games after Thursday’s 114-106 loss to the Brooklyn Nets at Xfinity Mobile Arena.

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Bombarded with injuries and illness, the Sixers have yet to play with a full roster. Yet, they are 16-12 and in fifth place in the Eastern Conference. The Sixers are a game behind the third-place Boston Celtics, whom they defeated twice this season. And their signature win was Dec. 19’s 116-107 road victory over the second-place and NBA Cup champion New York Knicks.

But with offseason uncertainty surrounding Embiid and George following left-knee surgeries, the safe preseason projection for the Sixers was an NBA Play-In Tournament team.

We may get a better idea of how good they are during the post-Christmas five-game road trip. The Sixers open the road trip on Friday against the Chicago Bulls, who, despite having a 14-15 record, are riding the conference’s longest winning streak at four games.

Then on Sunday, they face the defending NBA champion and this season’s best team in the Oklahoma City Thunder. After facing the Thunder (27-4 with a win over the Spurs/26-4 with a loss to the Spurs), the Sixers will play the Memphis Grizzlies on Tuesday and the Dallas Mavericks on New Year’s Day. They’ll conclude the five-game trip with a rematch against the Knicks (21-9) on Jan. 3.

Like the Bulls, the Grizzlies (14-16) and Mavericks have shown recent improvement. Dallas was 12-19 heading into their Christmas Day game against the Golden State Warriors. They were 7-4 since opening the season, 5-15.

“It will be a good test to play some really good teams,” George said of the road trip. “It will for sure be a test for us. But we’ve been playing great basketball despite this loss [Tuesday night to the struggling Nets],”

Before that loss, the Sixers had won six of eight games, with their two losses coming to the Los Angeles Lakers (Dec. 7) and Atlanta Hawks (Dec. 14).

“So we’re playing pretty good basketball,” George continued. “[Tuesday] was one of those nights we were a little bit flat. And we’ll pick up the pieces and keep it moving.”

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But George doesn’t see this as a defining road trip because the Sixers still don’t have their full complement of players.

Embiid is not expected to play in every game of this road trip due to management of right and left knee injuries and soreness. Kelly Oubre Jr. (left knee LCL sprain) and Trendon Watford (left adductor strain) remain sidelined. And VJ Edgecombe, Dominick Barlow and Quentin Grimes were sidelined against the Nets (9-19) with illnesses.

“As far as defining us, it’s still early,” George said. “We’re playing good basketball. Our record doesn’t indicate how well and challenging it’s been. We haven’t had a full roster at any point this season. Whether I’ve been down to start the season, myself and [Watford]. I come back, Kelly goes down. You know, Joel has been injured. Tyrese has been sick.

“So we really haven’t had a full roster. So it’s hard to tell what we are, who we can be.”

But the Sixers are eager to avenge their 113-111 loss to the Bulls at the United Center on Nov. 4. That’s when they blew a 24-point lead.

On that night, the Sixers relied heavily on Maxey and Embiid, either in the two-man game or in one-on-one situations. The problem was that neither player could get anything going down the stretch, as the Sixers missed their final 11 shots.

Maxey finished with a game-high 39 points. However, he had eight points on 2-for-8 shooting in the fourth quarter. Embiid was worse, being held scoreless on 0-for-5 shooting in the quarter. And that came after he scored two points on 1-for-5 shooting in the third period. Embiid finished with 20 points on 7-for-21 shooting.

The Bulls went ahead 113-111 on Nikola Vučević’s game-winning three-pointer with 3.2 seconds left. It was their only lead of the game.

The Sixers must maximize everyone’s talent and move the ball if they expect to be competitive. They must also find a way to contain Josh Giddy, who had 29 points, 15 rebounds, and 12 assists in that meeting. The guard is averaging 16.6 points, 10.6 rebounds, and 7.8 assists in the last five games against the Sixers, along with that triple-double.

Meanwhile, Vučević has tallied five double-doubles and one triple-double across his last 10 games against his former team. In addition to containing the duo, the Sixers will look to snap a three-game series losing streak.

They also believe this 10-day road trip will benefit team growth.

The trip will “get us out of our home market and be with each other on the plane, on the team bus, at the hotel, like, actually get a chance to do a few things together, too,” Andre Drummond said. “We have a couple of days in between games, too. So I know we’ll set up some team activities and really continue that bonding experience that we’re feeling right now.”

And we may get a better idea of how competitive the Sixers are, even with being undermanned.

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