July 12, 2026
Bill Streicher/IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
VJ Edgecombe immediately supplanted Jared McCain as Tyrese Maxey's long-term running mate.
Since the 2025-26 Sixers season ended, there has not been much time to debrief.
After six years on the job, former Sixers President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey was let go. The search for his replacement began immediately, with the organization landing on Mike Gansey to call the shots. Then came the 2026 NBA Draft and the start of free agency.
That is when the fireworks ensued, with Gansey pulling off a stunning blockbuster trade to acquire 2024 NBA Finals MVP Jaylen Brown. The Sixers then unexpectedly entered the LeBron James sweepstakes, where they seem to be legitimate contenders to land the NBA's all-time leading scorer.
As the Sixers and the rest of the NBA await James' decision, there is finally a chance for everybody to take a breath. In the spirit of reflecting, let's take a look at PhillyVoice's 10 predictions for the 2025-26 Sixers season. Which were right, and which were off the mark?
In the first eight years of his active NBA career, Embiid averaged 54.1 games played per season, peaking as the best player in the world. He was the NBA MVP in 2022-23, and before tearing his meniscus in January of the following season looked like an enormously better player, on the verge of repeating.
Then came 2024-25. Not only did Embiid only play in 19 games, but he was considerably less effective than ever before. Embiid shot just 44.4 percent from the field – a career-worst mark by far – and could never gain serious momentum.
In 2025-26, Embiid played in 38 games, double his total from the previous year but well below the standards from earlier in his career. At points during the season – particularly a dominant January – Embiid looked like a superstar again. But for considerable portions of the year, Embiid was far worse than that. This prediction was on the money.
This was also correct. There was a lot that was easy to understand about George's disappointing debut season with the Sixers in 2024-25, but his poor three-point shooting – George only shot 35.8 percent from beyond the arc in his first year in Philadelphia – was largely inexplicable for one of the more decorated shooters in recent history.
In 2025-26, George shot 39.2 percent on three-point tries. His on-ball scoring, while somewhat improved in his 10-game stint after serving a 25-game suspension that ran from the end of January to the end of March, was still far below what one would expect for a player making about 30 percent of the salary cap.
George, halfway through his four-year contract with the Sixers worth well over $200 million, was traded to the Boston Celtics earlier this month.
With one minute remaining in the Sixers' road loss to the Atlanta Hawks on March 7, this prediction looked like one of the safest of the bunch. Maxey had missed one two-game stretch due to an illness, and otherwise had played every game, averaging a gargantuan 38.3 minutes per game.
But, in the final seconds of that game, Maxey injured his finger colliding with teammate Adem Bona. He missed 10 games over two weeks before returning for the final nine games of the season.
Maxey finished the season at 38.0 minutes per game across 70 appearances. That average was tops in the NBA, 0.6 minutes per game ahead of Amen Thompson of the Houston Rockets. However, Thompson played in 79 games. His 2,953 total minutes led the league. Maxey, at 2,661 minutes, came in eighth despite his two-week absence.
While this guess did not come true, the spirit behind it – that Sixers head coach Nick Nurse would ride Maxey as much as he possibly could – was in the right place.
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George's suspension threw a wrench in the Sixers' plans about a week before the trade deadline. It provided them with a significant credit against the luxury tax, and that is what enabled Oubre to complete a three-year tenure with the Sixers.
Had George not been suspended, the Sixers getting under the tax line yet again would have almost certainly required a trade of Oubre. Once George's suspension went into effect, the Sixers were close enough to the threshold that smaller moves got them under.
Soon after free agency began, Oubre left the Sixers to sign a two-year deal with the Indiana Pacers.
This did not come to fruition, though there is a strong argument it should have. Drummond, on an expiring salary of $5 million, was the Sixers' lone usable piece of salary filler. Even if the Sixers simply utilized Drummond, a minimum contract and a second-round pick or two to find a more competent backup center behind Embiid, their rotation would have been strengthened.
Drummond did not get traded, which extended his Sixers tenure by another few months. He is now a member of the New York Knicks.
Grimes accepted his qualifying offer after a brutal trip to restricted free agency last summer. That put him on a one-year deal with a no-trade clause. The reason Grimes had the right to block a trade: his Full Bird rights would not travel to his new team.
That is why, even with a murky future in Philadelphia behind Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, Grimes waiving his no-trade clause was never seriously broached.
Grimes played out the year before signing a four-year deal worth $60 million to join the Los Angeles Lakers.
This is another hit, as Barlow started in 59 of his 71 appearances as a major revelation for the Sixers at power forward. Not only did Barlow earn a standard contract, but he received one with a significant short-term pay bump. Walker was a rotation regular for 50 games, then got his own standard deal – albeit a less lucrative one than Barlow's – and was in and out of the rotation down the stretch of the season.
Barlow showed enough to suggest that he is a long-term rotation big. Walker showed enough to suggest that he has the potential to be one, and at the very least is a useful player to have on the back end of a bench.
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It is difficult to imagine a prediction aging worse than this one did. Not only did Jared McCain not make a case as a more valuable prospect than Edgecombe, but Edgecombe shattered expectations to such a degree that McCain having a disappointing start to the year prompted Morey to trade him.
Before the Sixers' tanking efforts at the end of 2024-25 produced the No. 3 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, McCain's electric rookie season seemed to make him the likely long-term running mate for Maxey – even with a small sample, as his year was cut short by a torn meniscus.
But the Sixers drafted Edgecombe with that pick, Nurse was emphatic immediately about giving the 20-year-old every chance to succeed, and it paid off. Edgecombe had one of the better seasons for a rookie guard in recent NBA history, and there is no question he is Maxey's backcourt partner of the future.
McCain played considerably better after the Sixers traded him and figures to be a key rotation cog for the Oklahoma City Thunder for years to come.
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The Sixers were the No. 7 seed in the Eastern Conference, but one game back of the No. 5 seed. When they trailed the Boston Celtics in the first round, 3-1, this prediction looked like another winner.
Then came the 14th 3-1 series comeback in the history of the NBA, and the first in Sixers history. For three games, the Sixers harnessed every bit of talent that existed on the roster, with Embiid dominating a weak Celtics frontcourt, Maxey and Edgecombe torching Boston's guards and George filling in all of the gaps to power a truly stunning series victory.
The next round, of course, the Sixers were soundly swept by the Knicks on their dominant run to a title.
This was wrong not just on paper, but in spirit.
This prediction was an inherent statement of confidence in Morey's job security. Morey was known to be a strong advocate of Nurse, the only head coach he actually hired during his time in Philadelphia. At the core of this prediction: Morey would maintain enough credibility as the Sixers' shot-caller to keep Nurse's job safe, too.
Instead, Morey was let go after the Sixers' rough playoff exit, and Nurse was given a chance to stick around for his fourth season in Philadelphia. It was always seen as the least likely scenario as the Sixers pondered new decision-making layouts, but it ended up being the choice the team made.
"Obviously I really enjoyed working with Daryl," Nurse said last month. "I really did. Day-to-day and all that kind of stuff, was very enjoyable. But it's a decision that's been made and we've all got to move on from it and I wish him the best. Always, always have a fondness for Daryl. But Mike's here and he's in charge now, and my job is to get this team better every day. And that's what we're going to do."
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