You would think that, based on the Sixers' long history of letting their fans down, that everyone's eyes would be on the prize right now.

The Sixers have reached the 60-game mark of their 2025-26 regular season. Their lead over the Orlando Magic for the sixth and final surefire playoff bid in the Eastern Conference is only at 1.5 games. Joel Embiid was absent for the team's loss to the Boston Celtics on Sunday night due to an oblique injury, and he will be out for at least two more games, including Tuesday night's clash with Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs.

Yet in response to our call for Sixers mailbag questions, there were quite a few questions about how the Sixers will look and stack up come playoff time.

Assuming the Sixers are going to the playoffs, perhaps we can get a sense of how things might look – or how the Sixers should hope they look. Let's dive into your questions:

From @bluewya: If the Sixers are able to hold on and make the playoffs healthy, what teams do you think they best match up against in the Eastern Conference, and while unrealistic to make the NBA Finals, who would they match up well against in the Western Conference?

Four teams are clearly ahead of the remainder of the pack in the Eastern Conference: it is hard to imagine any of the Detroit Pistons, Boston Celtics, New York Knicks or Cleveland Cavaliers not hosting a first-round playoff series as a top-four seed. Detroit has a clear lead for the top seed, while Boston has a two-game lead over the Knicks, who have a 1.5-game lead over a surging Cavaliers team.

If the Sixers face Detroit in the first round, something will have gone quite wrong for one of the two teams in the last six weeks of the season. Of the remaining three options, Boston seems like the most obviously difficult matchup, in part because their team which is already excellent is expected to get Jayson Tatum back before the playoffs begin. Even if Tatum's minutes are limited and he is not quite his best self, he will be a higher-caliber upgrade than any team could imagine making this late in the season, and he will be purely additive to what has made Boston's season an overwhelming success.

In addition to a potential Tatum return in their back pocket, the Celtics have arguably the best coach in the NBA in Joe Mazzulla, who seems to always extract every bit of value he can from his players. Between Jaylen Brown, Derrick White and Payton Pritchard, they have three perimeter players capable of taking over a game on their own. Against a Sixers team which constantly finds itself allowing too many open three-point shots, the Celtics' three-point-centric offensive system would have a chance to thrive.

Boston has two formidable bigs for the Joel Embiid matchup; Neemias Queta showed on Sunday just how good of a player he has become and while Nikola Vučević is a defensive liability, his ability to space the floor has often turned Embiid into one, too. Both Queta and Vučević are equipped to pummel the Sixers on the boards, and so are their many hustle players, from White to youngsters Baylor Scheierman and Hugo González.

Any playoff series victory for the Sixers will require a masterful effort from Maxey, and the Celtics have more high-end options to defend him than any team in the NBA. White has spent as much time guarding Maxey as any NBA player. Scheierman did an admirable job against him on Tuesday. González could be an option there. Jordan Walsh shut Maxey down in crunch time of a Celtics win in Philadelphia earlier in the season. Even Brown has defended Maxey quite a bit in years past. Maxey scored 40 points in Boston on opening night, but in the Sixers' following three contests against the Celtics he shot a combined 25-for-69 from the field (36.2 percent). It is just not an ideal matchup.

So, that leaves Cleveland and New York. Both teams are imperfect, though the James Harden trade has seemingly done wonders for the Cavaliers and their bigs. Jarrett Allen appears rejuvenated playing with one of the greatest facilitators of a generation, and he and Evan Mobley form a unique look inside. The Sixers do not have many players that can definitively stick on the floor in a playoff series, but most of the ones that can are perimeter-oriented guys. Unless Sixers head coach Nick Nurse is willing to let Kelly Oubre Jr. or Paul George spend the bulk of a seven-game series banging with bruising bigs, he will have to get uncomfortable with who is in his rotation.

Of course, defending Harden and Donovan Mitchell at the same time is also an enormous challenge, but the Sixers have a few players theoretically capable of handling those assignments without being blasted. And it might be challenging for Cleveland to find places to hide those two star guards on the defensive end of the floor, particularly in crunch time.

New York can go to a similar double-big look with Karl-Anthony Towns and Mitchell Robinson, but that necessitates taking one of Josh Hart, OG Anunoby or Mikal Bridges off the floor. They have very few places to hide Brunson defensively, and the Sixers won two games at Madison Square Garden earlier this season in large part because VJ Edgecombe totally overwhelmed Brunson with his physicality.

The Knicks are not a perfect matchup – they beat the Sixers in an epic six-game series two years ago – but oftentimes playoff series turn into wars of attrition. Getting through games without having any weak links exposed is the name of the game. New York has more weak links, whether they be non-shooters or exploitable defenders, than any other team the Sixers appear in play to face in the first round. That, and a defense which has had obvious leaks all year because of the deficiencies of Brunson and Towns on that end of the floor, probably makes the Knicks the most favorable first-round matchup for a Sixers team which, to be clear, would decidedly be the underdogs in such a series.

MORE: Nick Nurse's plan to turn Edgecombe into a star and more

From @JKush33: What do you think will the be the starting lineup for the playoffs, assuming every one is healthy and not suspended?

The real question is whether Nurse will start Oubre or Dominick Barlow once George returns from his 25-game suspension. Soon before George was sidelined at the end of January, Nurse opted to pull Barlow from his starting five in favor of Oubre, giving his team its best chance at spacing the floor and finding an offensive groove and become more versatile as a perimeter defense. It came at the expense of size and rebounding, where Barlow's contributions have been outstanding all season.

Longtime readers have read an argument like this many times: once the playoffs come around, Nurse should not have his fifth starter written in pen. It should be dictated by matchups. There is nothing wrong with adjusting based on the makeup of an opponent, no matter how many people argue it is better to make another team adjust to you.

An example: if Boston has Tatum back by the playoffs and he is starting alongside Brown, White, another perimeter player and Queta, the size Barlow brings is not as essential in the opening unit. The Sixers would have a unique challenge facing two star-level wing scorers at the same time, and instead of crossing their fingers that Barlow can hang in a suboptimal matchup they can start their own two wings, with Oubre and George taking on those assignments. But against Cleveland, it would be silly to go small when the Cavaliers open games with Mobley and Allen; in that hypothetical series starting Barlow over Oubre would be the obvious call.

Just as interesting of a question as who will start for the Sixers in the playoffs: who will they trust coming off the bench? Oubre and Barlow will both play important roles, regardless of which one starts. The Jared McCain trade all but sealed Quentin Grimes being the Sixers' most important perimeter reserve. Someone has to back up Embiid at center, and Adem Bona's minutes have been a whole lot better than those of Andre Drummond for months. There is a chance his playoff debut goes poorly, but Bona does have the speed to keep up while Drummond is a total liability in space.

Could either of Trendon Watford or Jabari Walker convince Nurse they have enough utility to be worth playing? Walker will be left open in the corner in a playoff series, and if Watford does not have the ball he will be treated like a non-threat, too. Perhaps Walker can render that irrelevant with incredible work on defense and the glass, and maybe Watford can bring such an important dose of secondary ball-handling that Nurse is willing to accept the flaws that come with his off-ball minutes, but either of those things working in a playoff series feels somewhat improbable.

Maxey will, of course, play an insane number of minutes in the playoffs. But when he is on the bench, who will be the Sixers' point guard? The leader in the clubhouse has to be Edgecombe, likely with George and at least one other capable ball-handler out there with him, particularly because Cam Payne's second stint with the Sixers has gotten off to a difficult start.

The Sixers are a flawed team. When it comes to playoff matchups and rotations, no perfect answer or alignment exists. But in a down year for the Eastern Conference, their hope is that Embiid and Maxey have enough firepower to lead the Sixers to some gutsy wins.

As soon as you accept that outcome as a possibility, the Sixers will do something to make you feel foolish for ever pondering it. As soon as you write off the idea of it ever happening, they will do something to capture your attention and force you to reconsider.

MORE: Is Nurse on the hot seat?