March 12, 2026
Lon Horwedel/Imagn Images
With no centers available, the Sixers could not match up with Pistons All-Star Jalen Duren on Thursday.
How many more times can the Sixers go 48 minutes without standing a chance?
They can add another wire-to-wire blowout loss to their list. On Thursday night, a Sixers team playing without Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, Paul George, Kelly Oubre Jr., Adem Bona, Andre Drummond and Johni Broome took the court in Detroit against the Eastern Conference-leading Pistons. The result was not hard to predict.
Detroit led the Sixers 17-6 within five minutes of the game tipping off. The Pistons never looked back, taking full advantage of an opportunity to bank an easy, stress-free victory. The Sixers, meanwhile, have now lost five of their first seven games in March, with their two wins coming against bottom-feeding teams. As the injuries continue to pile up, the Sixers have strayed further away from resembling a team anyone needs to fear.
Takeaways from a 131-109 loss that never even featured a hint of encouragement despite the available Sixers fighting like hell to make it competitive:
Before this game even started, it was entirely evident that there was a massive mismatch at play.
On one side was the best and deepest center rotation in the NBA, with All-Star Jalen Duren spearheading a relentless Detroit frontcourt. Behind Duren is Isaiah Stewart, an elite rim protector and likely the very best backup center in the NBA. Behind Stewart is old friend Paul Reed, a high-caliber backup center on most teams but relegated to being the best third-string center in the league on the Pistons. Reed, who would be one of the Sixers' most reliable players this season, did not even enter the game for Detroit until midway through the second quarter.
On the other side: no centers. Embiid remained out – the Sixers are due to provide an update on the former NBA MVP in the next day or two – and both of his primary backups, Bona and Drummond, were ruled out on Thursday due to back issues. Even fourth-string center Johni Broome, whose rookie season is likely to end without a single genuine rotation appearance, was sidelined; Broome underwent surgery for a torn meniscus in his right knee at the end of February.
After months of being hesitant to lean into using either player as a small-ball five (despite encouraging early-season results), Sixers head coach Nick Nurse had no choice but to lean on Dominick Barlow and Jabari Walker as his centers. Neither player is necessarily underqualified to slide up to the five – in fact, it stands to reason at this point that either player would be a better option than Drummond at center – but they are suited to serve in that role against teams that exist on the smaller end of the spectrum. If there is one thing the Detroit Pistons are not doing, it is existing on the smaller end of the spectrum.
While Detroit's size advantage inside was evident – Duren had a particularly dominant string of plays working against the much smaller Barlow – the Sixers' impressive determination was enough to at least keep them afloat for much of the game without being embarrassed. They were on the wrong side of a massive talent disparity, and that was more impactful than any individual matchup within the game. It is not a good time to be a member of the Sixers.
For more than three months, the Sixers' usage of two-way players was a major subplot of their season. Barlow had emerged as a starter and Walker turned into a regular contributor, but neither player was signed to a standard deal, limiting how many times the Sixers would be able to have them dress before signing them to full-time contracts.
The Sixers, without enough depth to use those two players' limited availability with any sort of moderation, activated both players any time they were healthy until they were no longer able to. Barlow got a new contract within hours of the trade deadline passing; after a few games of being reduced to wearing street clothes while in a state of limbo Walker eventually got the same deal.
Now, the Sixers have a group of two-way players that is unusual but has plenty of NBA experience across the board. Dalen Terry has popped lately, Tyrese Martin has looked like an NBA-caliber player in the past and MarJon Beauchamp has all of the necessary gifts to finally break through at this level. But they are all like-sized, which is noteworthy considering teams typically try to diversify their two-way crops from a positional perspective.
In any case, the Sixers do have to activate all three of Terry, Martin and Beauchamp for the time being in order to get by on the injury front. But because of how late in the season Terry and Martin signed their deals, their numbers of remaining NBA games are already dwindling. Martin can only be active six more times and Terry only has eight games remaining, while Beauchamp has more games of availability left than the Sixers do contests on their regular-season schedule.
So, expect to see Beauchamp dressing just about every night for the foreseeable future. He made his best impression yet as a member of the Sixers in the team's spirited second quarter, as he scored 10 points to help the Sixers stay in the game:
MarJon Beauchamp scored 10 points in the first half of Sixers-Pistons on Thursday night: pic.twitter.com/UYBgcdDBI1
— Adam Aaronson's clips (@SixersAdamClips) March 13, 2026
The only Sixers player to dress on Thursday but not be used in the regular rotation was Martin, and that feels like a real mistake. And while Martin clearly has the potential to be a useful NBA player, that statement is not even an endorsement of his ability. The Sixers only have so many chances to look at Martin (and Terry, who was the Sixers' first substitution). If they are being forced to activate them now, they might as well see what they have before their availabilities expire.
Some additional notes:
• It does not sound like Bona or Drummond will miss much time – Bona underwent imaging that came back clean, according to reporting out of Detroit from The Philadelphia Inquirer, while Drummond was not ruled out until 45 minutes before Thursday's game after waking up with spasms. But with bigs and their backs, things can sometimes get scary.
• For the ninth time this season, the 39-year-old Lowry logged minutes for the Sixers on Thursday. He was inserted into the rotation late in the first quarter. In 13 days, the hometown product will turn 40 years old.
• Another Philadelphia kid, 21-year-old Justin Edwards, got a start on Thursday. There have been some signs of life from him after months of failing to contribute. Edwards, who briefly exited the game in the first quarter after getting poked in the eye, pulled off a terrific two-way sequence against MVP candidate Cade Cunningham in the second quarter:
Justin Edwards with the steal and score for two buckets in under 10 seconds pic.twitter.com/gjAZ2lURiq
— Liberty Ballers (@Liberty_Ballers) March 13, 2026
• There will be growing pains as VJ Edgecombe, stunningly adept at fitting into a two-way role around stars as a 20-year-old rookie, begins taking on primary ball-handling and scoring assignments every single night. He had a pretty nightmarish performance on Thursday; nothing would fall for him as a shooter and his limitations with handling and playmaking were on full display. Maybe these next few weeks will help spur long-term development for Edgecombe, but they are almost certain to drive down his season-long efficiency marks and turnover numbers.
Up next: Any winnable game remaining on the schedule is precious for the Sixers. That includes their upcoming Saturday afternoon home game against the lowly Brooklyn Nets.
