CLEVELAND — The Philadelphia 76ers are in a rough spot.
They are playing without their four best players — Joel Embiid, Paul George, Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe — for various reasons. They have fallen into Play-In Tournament territory, and Monday night’s 115-101 short-handed loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers will make that deficit a little more difficult to recover from.
The rest of their week features the second game of a back-to-back at home against the Memphis Grizzlies, a trip to the Detroit Pistons and another back-to-back. There’s no guarantee of when, or if, they will be fully healthy and whole, or whether it will be in time to salvage one of the six guaranteed playoff spots in the Eastern Conference.
However, the team remains in relatively good spirits.
On Monday, as team members filed out of the locker room to catch a charter headed back to Philly, several players watched the thriller between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver Nuggets. They were rooting for former teammate Jared McCain as he made a key shot down the stretch for OKC.
If the Sixers’ fan base is panicking, if there are questions surrounding the team, the players have a calm about them that belies their situation.
Part of this is confidence, a feeling that getting healthy will go a long way toward Philadelphia (34-30) eventually making a run. And part of it is what the 76ers looked like for a brief time in January when they were completely healthy. They looked like a team capable of competing at a high level.
“We have, what, four of our five starters out?” small forward Justin Edwards said. “We know that we have a chance when we have all of our guys.”
Even for a team that’s had durability issues, its laundry list of injuries is long. Embiid has a strained oblique muscle and will be evaluated after Tuesday night’s matchup against Memphis. Maxey sprained his right fifth finger on Saturday in a loss against the Atlanta Hawks. Maxey, who wore a splint on the finger Monday, will see a specialist later in the week, coach Nick Nurse said. Edgecombe is still making his way from the back injury he suffered last week. George still has two more weeks left of a 25-game suspension to serve.
The depleted roster is one of the reasons the 76ers have dipped in the standings. Philly is No. 8 in the East, a game and a half behind both the Miami Heat and Orlando Magic and just a game ahead of the Atlanta Hawks for the ninth spot. The Hawks hold the head-to-head tiebreaker, too.
Philadelphia has 18 games remaining. Every loss is a big one. Every win it can scratch out, especially when short-handed, is an important one.
“We know what it is,” guard Quentin Grimes said. “We know that the standings are there, and we know that we just have to go out and keep playing hard every night. We just have to keep at it.”
Are the players and coaches correct in their confidence? Can the Sixers rebound and make a run?
Any skepticism is fair, considering the 76ers have had fleeting doses of full health over the past two seasons. Any frustration among the fan base, particularly since a controversial trade deadline in which they dealt McCain for draft picks, is fair.
If the season ended today, the 76ers would be in the Play-In Tournament on the road against the Heat, with the winner taking the No. 7 spot in the East. As things stand, that would mean a first-round matchup with the Boston Celtics.
If they lost the hypothetical Play-In game to the Heat, their season would come down to one home game against the winner of the Hawks-Charlotte Hornets matchup, two teams the 76ers have struggled against this season. If they were to win that, they would get the eighth seed and the Detroit Pistons in the first round.
For a team that’s had so much trouble getting healthy, the extra Play-In games would be significant. It’s one of the reasons why a top-six spot would be so beneficial for Philadelphia. The 76ers would have almost a week off to rest.
“Our spirits have been good,” Nurse said. “I think tonight I liked the shots we generated, and I liked how we played offensively. I would have liked to have seen us make more shots. But we know that we have to work hard. I think a game like this allows us to get a look at some of the other guys and get some other guys minutes.”
It’s easy to say the 76ers need to get healthy. However, they also need to re-establish the rhythm they had in early January when they won five of six games.
They defeated the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets in that stretch. They started a West Coast road trip in February by winning three of four games. But then the health issues started to attack them in droves, and they arguably haven’t been the same since. The evaluations of Embiid and Maxey on Tuesday loom large.
Even with a schedule that’s been tough of late, there are places for potential wins. The Sixers face the tanking Brooklyn Nets, Sacramento Kings, Grizzlies and Utah Jazz within the next two weeks. If they can take care of those teams, they could put themselves in a decent spot.
“We have to play hard, and we have to make more shots,” point guard Cam Payne said. “We have to do a better job of creating better shots for each other. That’s important for us. We need to go 1-0 every day. That’s the goal.
“We obviously are where we are in the standings, so we have to find a way to win. At the end of the day, that means getting stops and for us to keep playing together.”