{"id":847928,"date":"2026-10-01T00:36:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T00:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/847928\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T00:36:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T00:36:17","slug":"what-will-sixers-look-like-on-defense-nick-nurse-most-excited-by-possibilities-nbc-sports-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/847928\/","title":{"rendered":"What will Sixers look like on defense? Nick Nurse \u2018most excited\u2019 by possibilities \u2013 NBC Sports Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2026-27 Sixers\u2019 paths to offensive greatness are not difficult to picture.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

How about the other side of the floor?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sixers head coach Nick Nurse indicated Wednesday that he expects to have a more diverse defensive approach in the upcoming season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cRecently, 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,\u201d Nurse said following Day 2 of training camp. \u201cI 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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).\u201d<\/p>\n

Strictly in terms of size and strength, it shouldn\u2019t 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. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe’s a special talent,\u201d Maxey said of Brown on Monday at media day \u201cI 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe takes a lot of challenges. I’ve seen him guard me, I\u2019ve seen him guard Joel, I\u2019ve seen him guard wings. We’re definitely going to need him on that end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Off the bench, Dean Wade<\/a> and Dominick Barlow are both 6-9 forwards who embrace dirty work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we can do a lot of different things between Bron, myself, Dean,\u201d Barlow said Monday. \u201cWe have a lot of big forwards that can switch and do a lot of stuff defensively. I think that\u2019s going to be exciting.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maxey has been impressed so far by Wade\u2019s game \u2026 and stature.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know he was this tall,\u201d Maxey said Wednesday in the middle of praising Wade’s 3-and-D skill set. \u201cYou play against a guy two or three times a year, but you don\u2019t really realize until you see a guy every day. He\u2019s really tall.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Maxey, the Sixers haven\u2019t yet progressed beyond \u201cdoing the basics\u201d on defense. Everyone will need to grasp the core principles and terminology before Nurse can expand.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Sixers were middling overall on defense last season<\/a>, but they did finish with a third consecutive year in the NBA\u2019s top 10 for defensive turnover percentage (eighth in the league at 15.3 percent, per Cleaning the Glass<\/a>).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Any defensive plan that creates a high volume of live-ball turnovers should help the Sixers attack in the open floor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we get stops, then we have a lot of dangerous pieces in transition,\u201d Maxey said. \u201cWe\u2019ve just got to share the ball, continue to make plays for each other. That\u2019s 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. \u2026 We\u2019ve got a lot of ball handlers on this team who can bring the ball up, who can pitch it ahead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Nurse has done a good job of emphasizing, \u2018Pitch the ball ahead, pitch the ball ahead.\u2019 And at the end of the day, we also have No. 21 (Embiid) trailing. That\u2019s a pretty good option, too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026-27 Sixers\u2019 paths to offensive greatness are not difficult to picture.\u00a0 Health permitting, points should naturally flow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":847929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3769],"tags":[679,7,7479,78,6,6724,678,207,3817,5902,4186,49668,1263],"class_list":["post-847928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia-76ers","tag-76ers","tag-basketball","tag-dominick-barlow","tag-jaylen-brown","tag-nba","tag-nick-nurse","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-76ers","tag-philadelphia76ers","tag-sixers-analysis","tag-sixers-news","tag-sixers-training-camp","tag-tyrese-maxey"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117362857321327514","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847928","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=847928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}