Five deciding factors that can make these playoffs different for the Sixers

In chasing their first trip beyond the second round of the playoffs since 2001, the 76ers have gone through many permutations of stars next to Joel Embiid over the years. There was the Ben Simmons era, the Jimmy Butler era, the James Harden era … and, now, the Tyrese Maxey era. (Apologies to Tobias Harris, whose era as the third banana is ongoing.)

Though they’ve come oh-so-close on multiple occasions, none of the previous attempts have yielded the NBA Finals run the Sixers and their fans crave. But with Embiid returning from injury — hopefully for good — and the team winning games again, hopes are renewed that this year’s outcome will be different from the rest. In order to make that happen, here are five factors that Philly needs to flip from its previous playoff failures.

As much excitement surrounded Embiid’s return — and as much as he helped reverse the downward trend of a team that went 11-18 in February and March without him — the mere fact of the Sixers’ MVP being in the lineup has not traditionally been enough to buoy Philadelphia in the postseason.

It starts with Embiid’s own performance. In the playoffs over his career, he’s seen his average Game Score (a single-number summation of box-score production) decline in five of his six postseasons, with his biggest dips coming over the past two years:

Among players with at least a 15.0 Game Score during the regular season since 2017-18, only four — Karl-Anthony Towns, Julius Randle, Domantas Sabonis, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — saw their average decline more during the playoffs than Embiid. And among those with at least five appearances in Game 6 or 7 of a series, nobody has seen a bigger dip in their average specifically in those crucial late-series contests than Embiid, whose career Game Score of 14.0 in Games 6 and 7 is down a whopping 8.2 points from his usual regular-season mark.

If the Sixers survive the play-in tournament and get to the deep stages of a best-of-seven series, Embiid will have to improve in the crucible of those high-pressure contests.

Similar to Embiid, Philadelphia’s second bananas have also largely disappointed in the playoffs over the past six seasons.

Looking again to the Game Score numbers, four of the six qualified No. 2s who suited up in the playoffs saw their average production from the regular season dip in the corresponding postseason. (The only exceptions were Simmons in 2021 — ironically enough — and Butler in 2019.) And the only No. 2 who outperformed his usual stats during the Sixers’ final series of the postseason was Butler, further reinforcing his reputation as a cold-blooded playoff assassin.

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Against the backdrop of all that baggage, Maxey will now get his own shot. And he might actually be able to do it. Over the past two postseasons, Maxey has exceeded his regular-season Game Score average by 0.6 points — perhaps in part because he is less reliant on drawing fouls to be effective than someone like Harden, who perennially struggles to get to the line and play his usual game when the referees start swallowing the whistle in the playoffs.

Maxey has his own drawbacks as a player; for instance, he is nowhere near the 3-point threat that Harden was, nor is he as good defensively as Simmons at his peak. But he will go into these playoffs offering the Sixers something different out of their No. 2, and for a team in desperate need of change, that might be good enough.

We all know what Embiid means to the Sixers’ offense. If he’d played enough games to qualify, he would have led the league in scoring for a third consecutive season. On a per-possession basis, he might literally be the best scorer in NBA history. In the games he played vs. not, Philly’s offensive rating rose from 113.5 points per 100 possessions (which would rank eighth-worst in the league) to 122.5 (which would rank second-best).

But Embiid’s presence is just as important at the other end of the floor. Though Philadelphia ranked 11th in defensive rating over the course of the entire season, their points allowed per 100 varied from 117.3 without their cornerstone in the lineup (which would rank 10th-to-last in the NBA) to 112.0 (second-best) with him. That includes a stretch during which the Sixers put up the best defensive numbers in the league in April (i.e., since Embiid’s return).

Leaning into defense happens to mesh with Nick Nurse’s coaching style. In the past, defense was the primary calling card for his Toronto teams, and while Embiid’s prolonged absences made it tough to see what he could truly do with this defensive roster at full strength, he is a better bet than Doc Rivers was to prevent a team like the Boston Celtics — whom the Eastern conference playoffs will very likely go through again — from averaging nearly 120 points per 100 possessions over an entire playoff series, including 120.8 in Game 7.

Since 2017-18 (the first year Philly returned to the playoffs in the Embiid era), the Sixers have the league’s 12th-best assist-to-turnover ratio (1.81) and a break-even turnover margin (+0.0 per game, 14th-best) during the regular season — not bad numbers given how many dynamic, high-usage players they’ve had with the ball in their hands.

But in the playoffs, those numbers drop to 1.62 (18th) and -1.5 (25th), respectively. In their playoff series losses, they’ve lost the turnover battle by a total of 66 in 36 games, or an average of 1.8 per game. (In last year’s finale against Boston, they were nearly doubled up on the turnover ledger.) Simmons, Harden and Embiid have each carried a postseason turnover rate at least 20 percent worse than the NBA average over that span. Protecting the ball — and forcing turnovers at the other end — has consistently been a problem for the Sixers in recent postseasons.

» READ MORE: The Sixers are in the NBA’s play-in tournament for the first time. Here’s everything to know.

The positive news is that Maxey is really good at avoiding giveaways. Among qualified players, he had the league’s 12th-lowest turnover rate (6.8 percent) overall, and he was by far the best among players who had usage and assist rates of at least 25 percent apiece. With Maxey doing a lot more of the ballhandling and distributing in these playoffs, he should help with what has been one of Philadelphia’s postseason Achilles' heel.

During the Embiid era, no team who played at least five playoff games decided by a single possession has a worse record in those contests than the Sixers’ 2-5 mark. This includes two losses in the 2021 conference finals vs. Atlanta alone, the infamous Kawhi Leonard buzzer-beater game in 2019, and multiple games against Boston during Embiid’s maiden trip to the second round.

Although it’s always tempting, you can’t blame Rivers for all (or even most) of those defeats. But you might be able to blame poor luck, at least to some degree. Even though tactics and clutchness play a role, too, we know a team who loses a bunch of close games tends to see that record even out over time. The Sixers may not be “due” for good luck, but they might at least expect neutral luck going forward.

The same goes for other categories that research shows can be prone to random fluctuation, such as opponent three-point percentage. After allowing a 34.8% clip during the regular season, Philly saw Boston shoot 38.6% — nearly a full percentage point above its usual average, and almost four points beyond what the Sixers’ defense typically allowed — in the second round last season, including a 30-for-68 showing (44.1%) in Games 6 and 7.

As great as the Celtics are — and they actually improved their accuracy to 38.8% from downtown this season — they may not be able to bury Philadelphia under a barrage of threes quite so heavy this time around, assuming the Sixers aren’t actually as snakebitten as they seem.