With 25 games left on their 2025-26 regular-season schedule, the Sixers are clinging onto the sixth and final surefire playoff bid in the Eastern Conference, 0.5 games ahead of a sputtering Orlando Magic team.

Every game left on the Sixers' slate matters, from Tuesday night's road clash with the tanking Indiana Pacers to their April 13 regular-season finale in Philadelphia against the Milwaukee Bucks. Any win or loss could be the difference between the team being locked into a playoff spot and being forced into fighting for their lives right off the bat in the NBA Play-In Tournament.

What if things go poorly? How could the Sixers have better prepared themselves for a successful stretch run? If Johni Broome is indeed out for the remainder of the season with his torn meniscus, can the Sixers add another new face to the roster?

In this week's Sixers mailbag, let's answer those questions:

From @RNDiamondstein: Is Nick Nurse at all on the hot seat for some of the team-wide deficiencies, ugly losses, and other arguable failures this year? Or do the personnel shifts around injuries and suspensions throughout [the season] again get him a pass?

As early as January of last season, the Sixers were trying to reassure folks that head coach Nick Nurse's job was not in jeopardy whatsoever, that Nurse was the victim of brutal circumstances and that the organization was not looking to scapegoat him for its massively disappointing season.

It goes without saying that no head coach would have had a successful season with last year's Sixers. Joel Embiid played 19 games in which he looked like a shell of himself; the same applied to Paul George's 41 games. Even Tyrese Maxey was dealing with multiple genuine injuries throughout the year before he was shut down. The environment was miserable, and with a top-six protected first-round pick to safeguard, the Sixers had no choice but to spend the last two months of the season tanking.

Even for those who do not believe Nurse is the right person to guide the Sixers moving forward, it would have felt a bit silly to place blame for what happened last season on him.

Now, though? The process of evaluating Nurse should hinge much more on how much lemonade he is able to squeeze out of the lemons he is given.

It is fair to say that no coach is going to maximize their skills leading a team that must constantly change its identity based on whether or not one or two injury-prone players are available. It may not sound fair to say that Nurse, an NBA champion in his own right, should be fired because he cannot get a grip on an issue he has no responsibility for creating and did not necessarily sign up to handle for his entire stint with the Sixers.

But like it or not, this is the world the Sixers inhabit now, with little indication they will be moving on from the constant shuffling of lineups and schemes in the years ahead. The most important aspect of being head coach of this team moving forward will be dealing with the fact that at least two entirely separate identities must be installed and ready to be utilized at any given moment. If the Sixers decide Nurse has proven incapable of handling that part of the job, they should look for a new head coach who can. It would not need to be viewed as an inherent statement that the Sixers' disappointing performance during Nurse's tenure is his fault and his fault alone, just that someone else might be equipped better to adjust to the franchise's unique circumstances.

The guess here: Nurse's fate is far from decided now, and whether or not he has a fourth year in Philadelphia will depend on how his team performs late in the season and in the postseason. Nurse was the first Sixers head coach hired by President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey, and if this season ends in disappointing fashion, Morey could feel pressure to fire Nurse and give himself one more chance to keep his own job by hiring a new coach. If things go really horribly, perhaps the entire Sixers' braintrust will be out. If the Sixers manage to win a playoff series in a weak Eastern Conference and generally play enjoyable and impressive basketball, it will be easier for the organization to justify keeping both Nurse and Morey.

MORE: What to make of recent stretch without Embiid, key lineup notes, more

From @OJPATTERSON: If the Sixers decided they wanted to pay the tax [before the trade deadline], what would the tax bill be if the Sixers kept Jared McCain AND Andre Drummond? Would they be prevented from signing Dominick Barlow to the deal he got or adding someone else if they were over the tax / first apron?

Because the Sixers were over the luxury tax threshold before trading Jared McCain and got under the threshold for good once they moved him, there is a perception that the Sixers trading the second-year guard was directly tied to and motivated by getting under the tax. That is not how the trade should be viewed.

To be clear, the argument here is not that the Sixers ended up ducking the tax yet again by pure coincidence. But once Paul George's 25-game suspension afforded the franchise nearly $6 million worth of credit against the tax, the team was so close to the tax line that it was not going to be remotely challenging to duck. The Sixers did need to both dump Eric Gordon and trade McCain to get there; dumping Gordon and any other player would have done the trick with at least enough room below the tax to sign Dominick Barlow and Jabari Walker to standard contracts while also filling their 15th roster spot in the buyout market.

The Sixers traded McCain for a middling first-round pick and three second-round picks because they thought they would be able to derive more value from those picks than from McCain. It is unpopular thinking, but it is their thinking. And if that is how they felt, it is hard to imagine how McCain was going to make it through the trade deadline as a member of this team.

Now, to the original question: if the Sixers had merely dumped Gordon, given Barlow the exact same contract he got in real life and then converted Jabari Walker's two-way deal to a standard contract – they would still have not acquired any players via trade, and they would not have signed Cam Payne – they would have ended up in the ballpark of $3.5 million over the tax. That would have necessitated a tax payment of about $3.5 million.

Compared to the hypothetical scenario described above, the real-life Sixers saved themselves nearly $11.8 million. They notched approximately $3.5 million in savings going from McCain to Payne. That switch getting them under the tax prevented them from having to pay a bill of about $3.5 million. It also entitled them to a "kickback" payment, as all teams that do not go over the tax line share an even split of the cumulative tax money paid by the ones that do go over it. This year's kickback is currently projected to be worth just under $4.8 million, according to Sports Business Classroom – a figure considerably smaller than usual.

As for the second part of your question: nothing about Barlow's unusual new contract – he will earn $3,415,000 between his signing date of Feb. 5 and the end of the regular season, then the Sixers have a team option for the exact same salary in 2026-27 – required the Sixers to stay under the first apron. They very much could have signed the exact same agreement while being a team that paid luxury tax penalties.

MORE: How would trade deadline have gone without George's suspension?

From @dwhensel: If Johni Broome has a meniscus tear, can the Sixers put him on IR and sign another player? We can use another big who can play when Embiid is out.

If the Sixers want to replace Broome on their standard roster, they must waive him. The NBA has no injured reserve, and it is too late to apply for a Disabled Player Exception (DPE), which is a device teams can use to replace a player who has been ruled out for the remainder of the season due to an injury. Even if the Sixers could apply for a DPE and replace Broome, they would very likely just be signing a player to a contract in the final days of the regular season. 

MORE: Johni Broome's rookie season is likely over