The Philadelphia 76ers began the season in the toilet, but appear now to have slithered out of the bowl. They have the best record in the NBA since Thanksgiving, in a tie with three teams whose bona fides are for the most part pretty well established. All it took was a run of schedule heavy on the league's bozos—the 76ers have played (and beaten) the Charlotte Hornets three times in 18 days—and a little bit of musculoskeletal good fortune, and today the 76ers find themselves just a game out of the Eastern Conference play-in. The cruddiness of the East makes this not too much of an accomplishment, but the 76ers still hope to make something of this season, and a grip on the back of a breathtakingly sad playoff pack at least gives them reason to keep struggling upward.
Wednesday's 118-114 road win over the festively clad Boston Celtics was a good one. This was just the sixth time all season that Philadelphia has had all of Joel Embiid, Paul George, and Tyrese Maxey in the lineup at the same time, and the 76ers are now a respectable 4–2 with their core intact. This is not yet the world-destroying Big Three anyone might've imagined, in part because George and Embiid are still working their way into rhythm and shape, but in 107 minutes of shared court-time the trio has eked out a narrow positive net rating, by holding opposing teams to a suffocated 99.6 points per 100 possessions. Eventually one or more of these very good basketball players will remember how to shoot, and then Philadelphia's important lineups will also thrive, or at least stink a lot less, on the offensive end. For now it's enough to tread water with hellacious defense.
This is all still a work in progress. The 76ers and Celtics tended to match their best lineups Wednesday, and Boston's beat the hell out of Philadelphia's, which for the time being is to be expected. Embiid is still a bit of a mess, and the 76ers lost his minutes very handily. Some of what made the win so encouraging, beyond the quality of the opponent and the continuation of the solid vibes, is how Philadelphia's reserves and role players worked over their Boston counterparts. Head coach Nick Nurse seems to have found some reliable bench combinations, even with hotshot rookie Jared McCain out indefinitely with an injured knee, by playing deathly slow with lineups featuring Kyle Lowry and Guerschon Yabusele.
Even relatively shitty versions of Embiid and George command a lot of attention. The Celtics bent enough in the direction of Philadelphia's stars that the other 76ers were often operating in acres of space. Caleb Martin was the main beneficiary, dropping 23 points on just 11 shots. "I know how they're going to go out and guard me," said Martin, who was open a lot and in all cases defended by Boston's most vulnerable dudes. "I know who's going to be guarding me. I know what shots I'm going to have, and I have to take those no matter what." Eventually one or both of the team's less reliable stars will become good again, at least for stretches, and Nurse's starting lineup will take off, and if his weird sludge-ball bench crews can continue to hold their own the 76ers will be in very good shape.
Of course this all depends upon Embiid and George staying healthy for decent stretches of time, and then all the way into freakin' April. George has already hyperextended his left knee twice this season, and Embiid recently added a facial fracture to what seems to be a constantly eroding lower body. He almost kerploded again on Wednesday, before the game even started, when he attempted a long fallaway jumper during warmups and landed awkwardly.
"I stepped on, I think, a security guard and twisted my ankle," recalled a somewhat subdued Embiid after the game. "It was OK, a little sore, but it's Christmas." Embiid intended this to mean that he had to play on Christmas, because it's a special occasion, not to be missed for a simple sore ankle, and not necessarily that his surviving this incident was a Christmas miracle. When I saw a pregame update that said Embiid may have suffered an injury in warmups, I just assumed that several of his ligaments had snapped, and possibly that his legs had finally dissolved away to a grey-pink foam. I'm not even sure I lifted my eyebrows. These moments drive home the improbability of his body and Paul George's both surviving several more months of professional basketball, so that the 76ers can carry any real hope of a deep run into the playoffs.
Still, in the meantime, it's exciting to have a reasonably healthy 76ers team by January, one capable of taking a win in Boston while playing far below their best. The East badly needs another contender, and the 76ers are one of maybe two teams that have the personnel for it. Whether they can stick around will depend on Embiid's body surviving many more falls. I know his teammates want him to practice, but maybe just to be safe they could wrap him in memory foam first. It won't always be Christmas.
