October 08, 2025
Colleen Claggett/For PhillyVoice
Nick Nurse and his staff have their work cut out for them in 2025-26.
Over the course of the marathon that is an 82-game season, Sixers head coach Nick Nurse spends an ungodly amount of time altering his rotation. Sometimes Nurse is forced to make changes out of necessity, and other times he is making slight tweaks to substitution patterns and lineups looking for the optimal path to 48 productive minutes.
Nurse has oftentimes referred to this mode as using his "pencil." It is a fitting term given the amount of figurative (or perhaps literal) erasing the gig requires. Particularly on this team – one built around multiple injury-prone players – constant shuffling is inevitable.
In 2025-26, Nurse will once again have his work cut out for him. Even if everything goes according to plan for the Sixers in terms of health and availability, he will be forced to repeatedly make sweeping changes to his lineups and substitution patterns.
Opening night is officially two weeks away. Nurse should be eager to try out these three units in hopes of finding some semblance of rotation stability:
| PG | SG | SF | PF | C |
| Tyrese Maxey | Jared McCain | Quentin Grimes | Paul George | Adem Bona |
One of the most common questions posed to Nurse during the Sixers' first weekend of official practices was how he would eventually incorporate three-guard lineups into his rotation. Tyrese Maxey and Quentin Grimes make up a strong starting backcourt, while the team has plenty of incentive to push Jared McCain and VJ Edgecombe as much as possible. There are only 96 guard minutes to go around, so finding avenues to play three of those four at once should be a priority.
That will force Nurse to play lineups like this that are admittedly undersized. This sort of unit will have tremendous pace and excellent floor spacing, but it will also be challenging for such a grouping of players to hold up defensively – even after Paul George exceeded expectations on that end of the floor last season. How does Nurse approach lineups with such clear strengths and weaknesses?
"Let me start this way: I always try to look at the positives," Nurse said. "You've always got to keep thinking, what's our advantage here? What are the advantages, what are the advantages, what are the advantages? Are we faster? Are we quicker? Are we better shooters? Or we've got more handlers out there. Keep reminding yourself that there are advantages."
With this specific grouping, the ultimate advantage is having three players – Maxey, McCain and Grimes – with elite pull-up shooting skill, the ability to generate an advantage off the dribble, and the ability to execute a strong pass after forcing the defense into rotation. When playing off the ball, each of those three players can also serve as a valuable floor-spacer for whichever of the other two players has the ball.
But Nurse knows it is not quite that simple. He has to make sure the Sixers are maximizing their obvious advantages, limiting their obvious deficiencies and carving out potential opportunities that are not as obvious.
"We know we've got to work, we've got to drill guarding bigger people on the low block or drill schemes on the low block," Nurse said. "...The rebounding, we've got to drill it, and we've got to scheme it. Those are the things again. But I've always got to keep reminding myself: yeah, that's going to be tough, to guard on the low block, yes, it's going to be tough to rebound against size. But can we pull them away and get more space? Can we get more threes because they're too slow for us? Can we go around them for an offensive rebound? Whatever those things are."
This lineup is particularly reliant on Adem Bona to make significant strides as a rim protector, and while Bona's first two preseason games in Abu Dhabi last week were not all that encouraging, his long and productive summer has given him plenty of confidence. Many members of the Sixers have highlighted how much Bona has grown since he was a wide-eyed rookie this time a year ago.
MORE: Bona riding EuroBasket momentum into second NBA season
| PG | SG | SF | PF | C |
| Tyrese Maxey | Kelly Oubre Jr. | Paul George | Trendon Watford | Joel Embiid |
Nurse has to figure out the best assortments of the players he has available, and in 2025-26 that is going to mean plenty of guard-heavy lineups. But it is worth noting that last season, the Sixers' only stretch of play that was remotely inspiring came along with a focus on size that excited Nurse. Joel Embiid rejoined the starting lineup after returning from injury, and Guerschon Yabusele slid down from being an undersized center to a bruising power forward. The Sixers were able to impose a level of physicality that some teams failed to match.
Here, the Sixers take their two cornerstones in Embiid and Maxey, then fill the spots in between them with as much size as they can possibly find. It might not be a lineup they can play every night while at full strength without limiting the playing time of someone like Edgecombe, but there is a clear path to this unit being successful on both ends of the floor, which is not an easy thing to come by.
Everything this unit did offensively could revolve around the lethal two-man game Embiid and Maxey have developed over the years, with the nine-time All-Star George being able to function as a tertiary offensive option. Oubre's focus could be the sort of cutting and slashing that he has excelled with when sharing the floor with Embiid over the years. And because Maxey is the only one of the Sixers' four guards on the floor here, his close friend Watford makes sense as the fifth and final member of this unit to bring some additional ball-handling and initiating.
If Embiid and George both end up returning to action before McCain, this lineup should at least be a staple until the 21-year-old guard recovers from his thumb injury.
MORE: Get ready for the season by reading Sixers player previews
| PG | SG | SF | PF | C |
| Jared McCain | VJ Edgecombe | Quentin Grimes | Justin Edwards | Adem Bona |
The Sixers have officially entered the two-timeline phase of team-building, with coinciding efforts to contend at the highest levels now and build a strong nucleus of young talent. They are in a much better place with the latter than the former, of course, and this unit is comprised of much of the organization's impressive collection of young talent.
When Embiid is healthy, the Sixers almost exclusively have staggered him with Maxey to ensure that one of the two franchise cornerstones is on the floor at all times. But Embiid's productivity is now in question, in addition to even greater health concerns. Maxey played with Embiid as infrequently as ever in his fifth NBA campaign and it was far and away the most disappointing season of his career.
Pairing Embiid and Maxey together more often will be mutually beneficial; Maxey will consistently be empowered to take better shots and Embiid will not have to carry as large of a burden.
Joel Embiid does not like doing many things on the floor as much as he likes going between the legs as he screens for a moving Tyrese Maxey: pic.twitter.com/g73QwlhKCT
— Adam Aaronson's clips (@SixersAdamClips) February 11, 2025
But in order to get away with that, the Sixers will need at least two other players to prove capable of leading a quality offense for stretches of games.
That George is not a safe bet to meet that threshold is jarring – and disastrous given his salary – but even if he does not return to his prior form, the Sixers have players in Grimes and McCain whose very few opportunities to play on the ball in the NBA have produced exciting results.
If McCain and Grimes can tag team to create just enough shots for themselves and others over a five- or six-minute stretch, Nurse's sessions with his rotation pencil could be a lot less stressful. The next question for this unit in particular: Are either of Edgecombe and Edwards even ready to be a third option for stints within games?
MORE: Film breakdown of Edgecombe's first NBA game
