May 10, 2026
PHILADELPHIA – The 2025-26 Sixers season is over, and it ended in ugly fashion.
The Sixers lost in Game 4 on Sunday afternoon, officially ending a short-lived period of optimism that this team could be different. For the second straight playoff appearance, the Sixers were eliminated by the Knicks, with New York fans taking over South Philadelphia as the Sixers' season officially came to an end. This time around, the Knicks swept the Sixers.
After taking a 2-0 lead on the opening possession of Sunday's game, the Sixers fell behind 5-2. They never sniffed being remotely competitive again, instead drowning in the avalanche of Knicks three-point makes. Perhaps it is fitting that a Sixers team which lost so many games in blowout fashion during the season had its year end with a 144-114 defeat.
Game 4 was a party for the many New York fans in attendance. This was not a bipartisan crowd like previous playoff battles between these teams in Philadelphia have featured; the Knicks legitimately experienced a noteworthy home-court advantage despite being the visitors.
Until October, there are no more in-game adjustments to be made, injury timelines to be monitored or matchups to be examined. The bliss that stemmed from the Sixers' brief emergence has dissipated, but more questions about the direction of the franchise linger because of the glimpse of promise it provided. What happens next?
If the regular season was any indication, the Sixers looked several steps behind the best teams in the conference and in the league. Their bold approach to revamping the roster in the summer of 2024 – lauded at the time by most pundits, locally and nationally – has resulted in a 69-95 record across the last two regular seasons.
Then came three magical games in which the Sixers became the 14th team in NBA history to overcome a 3-1 series deficit. They finally toppled TD Garden, beating the Boston Celtics three times in a row, including twice on the road. Joel Embiid submitted his signature playoff performance, Tyrese Maxey was dazzling all series long and Paul George filled every necessary gap. VJ Edgecombe had multiple enormous performances, including one in a thrilling Game 7 win.
That hugely emotional ride did not just drain the Sixers mentally and emotionally; it seemed to take everything Embiid had left in the tank physically. It hurt them quite a bit against the Knicks, but it also – finally – provided proof of concept for what has been built here. The Sixers, with those four players at the helm, can beat a championship-caliber team in a best-of-seven playoff series.
Now, the job of Sixers management is difficult: parsing just how high the ceiling was for this group, and how high it can be moving forward. Were those two victories mirages, or signs that everyone needs to stay the course?
Once again going home earlier than hoped – this time, to be fair, it is later than expected – the Sixers remain out of the inner circle of championship contenders in the NBA. Their infamous Eastern Conference Finals drought has been extended yet again, and with the conference expected to be tougher next season, there may be no end in sight for the Sixers' staggering streak.
The only place to start when discussing what held the Sixers back is here: the NBA's salary cap for the 2025-26 season was $154,647,000. Embiid and George were on the Sixers' books for a combined $106,890,616 and only logged 75 combined regular-season appearances. Both players cannot be relied upon to stay healthy during the regular season, and it remains extremely challenging to fathom Embiid holding up over the course of four playoff rounds.
As the league's new salary cap environment led most teams to abandon the three-star model of team-building which dominated the 2010s, Sixers President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey doubled down heading into 2024-25. After all, Embiid was just a year removed from being the NBA MVP and George was the perfect two-way wing to slot in between Embiid and ascending star guard Maxey, who is on a max contract of his own. On paper, the Sixers have looked excellent for two years. But it has not translated to the caliber of success the organization has been coveting for nearly a decade now.
As more teams across the league bet on depth of rotation-caliber players being the most important thing, Morey – perhaps predictably – stuck to his roots of chasing stars. He got three of them, and on paper it seemed to be the right fit. But now more than ever, a top-heavy roster construction is a bet on the players at the top of the cap sheet being dependable to return positive value on their contracts. By rarely being available to play on any sort of consistent basis, Embiid and George may doom the Sixers' chances of being an elite regular-season team, or capable of sustaining their highest-caliber basketball deep into the playoffs. With three max contracts handed out, Morey does not have many resources available to bolster the team in any way that changes those sentiments.
Of course, Embiid remains the central figure in all of this. And with the 2025-26 season over, his three-year supermax extension is set to kick in. Embiid is projected to make $187 million over the next three seasons – assuming he accepts a $67.2 million player option for the 2028-29 campaign, during which he will turn 35 years old – and that likely renders any suggestions to trade him irrelevant. Given how infrequently Embiid plays and the value of every dollar in today's NBA, it is difficult to imagine any team viewing a trade for Embiid as a remotely feasible idea, even after his admirable playoff return.
Could George's post-suspension surge make him a trade asset this summer? All it takes is one team – and it does not feel inconceivable that the Sixers could get off of George's deal if they wanted to in the way it does with Embiid – but George is set to make over $110 million over the next two seasons. That is not an easy contract to include in a trade, even when the player has positive value.
So, the solution to the Sixers being stuck in the middle is not as simple as making a blanket statement that the team should rebuild. The Sixers do not have that option, at least to the extent most teams do.
Plus, what would bottoming out mean for Maxey, now a 25-year-old set to be named to his first All-NBA team? Maxey, the ultimate competitor who resents losing more than he relishes winning, has three years left on his contract and an undying desire to compete at the highest level. Maxey, represented by one of the league's foremost power brokers in Rich Paul, is entering his prime. A full-blown rebuild would not work for him even if it was a plausible option.
The good news for Maxey: he has his backcourt mate locked in. Edgecombe was a home run at No. 3 overall in the 2025 NBA Draft, and at 20 years old he logged over 2,600 regular-season minutes as a positive-impact player on both ends of the floor, then another 400-plus minutes in the playoffs, experiencing multiple critical scoring outbursts and handling crucial defensive assignments in the highest-leverage situations.
With all due respect to Maxey and his continued climb in the NBA, the franchise's most encouraging development this year was the emergence of Edgecombe. His flair for the dramatic captivated fans all year long, and he is the strongest example of the heater Morey has been on over the last few drafts.
Edgecombe has the floor of an elite role player. He is aiming much higher than that.
Sixers head coach Nick Nurse said before the start of the season that he would judge Edgecombe's success as a rookie by his minutes played. And of any individual decision Nurse made this season, successful or not, none was as impactful as the choice to empower Edgecombe from the first day of training camp to the final buzzer on Sunday: to play in heavy doses, to play with the ball, to play without the ball, to take big shots in big moments, to guard the NBA's best, to play through all kinds of mistakes. It sparked a tremendous year of development, and Edgecombe is a much better player now than he was in October.
There is no question that Nurse, now three years into his tenure in Philadelphia, has had a disappointing tenure so far. Reports were circulating as recently as after the Sixers' Game 4 loss to Boston that his job security was in jeopardy. But then came those three wins, the three best games Nurse has coached since arriving in Philadelphia.
Nurse completed that stretch despite enormous personal tragedy; his 62-year-old brother, Steve, unexpectedly passed away in between Games 5 and 6 of the Boston series.
As soon as the Sixers' miserable 24-58 season in 2024-25 came to an end, Morey declared in a joint press conference with Nurse that both of them would be back. What happens now?
For the first time since he came to Philadelphia in 2020, there seemed to be louder whispers in recent months which indicated the Sixers may evaluate whether or not Morey was the right person to be calling the shots. Morey's ambitious attempt to accumulate star power contributed to the depth issues which plagued the Sixers against New York, but it also led directly to their triumph over the Celtics.
Since the final horn sounded in Game 7 in Boston, the prevailing assumption has been that Morey and Nurse have each bought themselves another year on the job – though it was unclear whether they actually needed to do so. That may frustrate some fans who will see the upcoming summer as inactive, with a franchise betting that one stretch of three games was more representative of the bigger picture here than the other 91 games the 2025-26 Sixers played.
Even if the Sixers do end up looking more like their regular-season selves than their (first-round) playoff selves moving forward, there is a case to be made that Morey's strong draft history and ability to find value on the margins make him the right person to help get them out of the middle of the pack. There is also a solid argument that, as the development of Maxey and Edgecombe as one of the league's elite backcourt intensifies, Nurse should remain in place to see that process through.
Nobody would argue Nurse has done a masterful job in Philadelphia to date, but it was evident for weeks that he had so many fewer levers to pull than his counterparts, Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla and New York Knicks head coach Mike Brown. He outperformed Mazzulla, expected to be named the NBA Coach of the Year in short order. He has helped spur Maxey's development in addition to guiding Edgecombe through a terrific rookie season. Nurse has often been credited with the Sixers' shortcomings while the positive developments surrounding the team have been solely attributed to the players on the floor. It is not an accurate reflection of what has taken place.
Morey and Nurse both deserve credit for some of the team's successes in terms of scouting and player development on the fringes. But extracting excellent value on the two-way contract market or having a history of solid veteran's minimum signings feels like small potatoes when your season ends with a loss.
Nobody can say definitively what will come next for the Sixers. But no matter who the coach is and which person makes the final calls in the front office, the 2026-27 Sixers are probably going to begin the season looking quite similar to the team that lost on Sunday. There is not much maneuverability from a roster perspective given the bloated contracts that have already been signed. That makes it more challenging to hypothesize how exactly this franchise is supposed to return to the heights it has aimed to reach.
Embiid, and to a lesser extent George, represent what all of this was supposed to be leading towards – and why it has fallen short. Nowadays, Maxey and Edgecombe represent the light at the end of the tunnel. But the roadblocks in the way are significant.
