PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Sunday was Game 82 of the Philadelphia 76ers season, Nick Nurse said with a chuckle, before offering that he\u2019s still looking for continuity.<\/p>\n
Someday, in some magical land, the club may find it. But for Sunday\u2019s regular-season-concluding effort against the injury-decimated and lottery-seeking Milwaukee Bucks, it involved basically a novel starting lineup.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s game 82, but we\u2019re looking for a little continuity with these guys,\u201d Nurse said with some rue. \u201cI think they need to play together. And any chance we can get to do that, we\u2019ve got to keep doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
To that end, he started Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe, Kelly Oubre, Paul George and Adem Bona, a quintet that had played a grand total of 25 minutes together this season.<\/p>\n
That seems unfathomable until you unpack the two lengthy injury layoffs for Oubre, the one for Maxey, the 25-game suspension for George \u2026 and even a rudimentary understanding of the entire accursed vibe that is the Philadelphia 76ers.<\/p>\n
In any event, it\u2019s all hands on deck to try to fill the Joel Embiid-sized hole punched into the Sixers\u2019 playoff hopes, which will include a play-in game either Tuesday or Wednesday, with possibly another to follow if they lose and then a playoff series in which they will be prohibitive underdogs.<\/p>\n
The Embiid question hovered over Nurse, who had no update on the big man. Embiid is still recuperating from an appendectomy on Thursday in Houston. He traveled back to Philadelphia on Friday. The team has offered no timeline for his recovery, but it will certainly be several weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cExtremely tough,\u201d Nurse said. \u201cI think, first of all, it\u2019s pretty serious. I think that\u2019s the big thing you\u2019ve got to keep in mind. But obviously the timing\u2019s not great, and I think he was on an uptick, as far as where he was going playing wise. So it\u2019s all a big bummer, for him first, and then everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 76ers have options, though all of them are subpar in a post-Embiid world. Bona will start at center, though he and Andre Drummond will share time in trying to find favorable matchups. Dominick Barlow\u2019s effectiveness has varied greatly depending on whether or not he\u2019s next to Embiid.<\/p>\n
The ninth and final spot in the rotation seems to belong to Justin Edwards, though matchups could allow Trendon Watford and Jabari Walker to come back in from the wilderness.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust solid play,\u201d Nurse said of Edwards. \u201cI think, go in there and guard, go in there and help rebound. Take a shot. If they run you off the line, take it to the right place. Don\u2019t be afraid to put one up now, and the ball seems to find him. But Justin\u2019s good version is a good spot for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the other casualties of last week\u2019s chaos was Cam Payne, who suffered a hamstring strain and was going to be out for two weeks. The backup point guard would\u2019ve missed the play-in games, so the 76ers decided to waive him in favor of converting Dalen Terry from a two-way to a standard contract for him to be postseason eligible. With George back, his ballhandling was less needed than when he signed.<\/p>\n
Nurse called it a \u201cvery tough\u201d conversation with the veteran guard, who the 76ers signed in February after spending the start of the season in Serbia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think first of all, he did what he always does,\u201d Nurse said. \u201cHe sparks you, at least two or three games where you can think, man, where would we have been without Cam tonight? And to come off the bench and do that in a short number of games, and he has the ability to do that in the playoffs as well. And the decision was to wait or not. \u2026 So it\u2019s pretty unfortunate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Sunday was Game 82 of the Philadelphia 76ers season, Nick Nurse said with a chuckle, before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3769],"tags":[679,7,6,678,207,3817,66,7464],"class_list":{"0":"post-709289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-76ers","8":"tag-76ers","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-76ers","13":"tag-philadelphia76ers","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116394330827800069","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}