Paul George’s 25-game suspension is just the latest example of Sixers’ bad karma from The Process

Things were going well — Joel Embiid seemed healthy and the Big Three seemed cohesive — but then George failed a drug test and got banned until March.

With forward Paul George being suspended for 25 games, the Sixers hit another speed bump.Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer

by Marcus Hayes | Columnist

Published Jan. 31, 2026, 3:37 p.m. ET

In what sort of hellish karmic vortex do the Philadelphia 76ers exist?

They’d won two consecutive games Tuesday and Thursday. On Tuesday, Paul George made a record nine three-pointers. On Thursday, the win came thanks to a last-second shot by their best and most popular player, All-Star starter Tyrese Maxey.

They were 26-21 and held the No. 6 spot in the Eastern Conference, with ammunition on the roster for the trade deadline this coming Thursday.

After last season was lost to injury, and half of this season sputtered through lingering ailments, the Big Three — of Maxey, George, and Joel Embiid — were cooking. With the deadline looming, both Embiid and George, high-mileage thirty-somethings with injury baggage and maximum contracts, finally had played themselves into marketability. The Sixers also finally had assets to trade to augment the current roster, if they wished.

There was even more to feel good about.

On Saturday, the Sixers planned to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the 2000-01 team with Allen Iverson that made it to the NBA Finals — which also is the last time the franchise was truly relevant. They are in the 14th year of a scorched-earth rebuild dubbed The Process. However, as Embiid and George gelled with Maxey and rookie VJ Edgecombe, the Sixers looked like they could make a serious postseason run in an Eastern Conference decimated by injury.

That might still happen, but they’ve hit another roadblock.

On Friday, Josh Harris appeared in the notorious Epstein files as a business associate of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. While Harris was not implicated in Epstein’s crimes, that’s a hard stench to wash away.

Then, George was suspended 25 games for violating the NBA’s antidrug policy beginning with Saturday night’s game against the visiting New Orleans Pelicans.

It goes without saying that George’s carelessness and selfishness are inexcusable. George told ESPN that he mistakenly took a banned medication to address a mental health concern.

We’re all in favor of addressing mental health, we’re also in favor of telling team doctors about everything chemical you put in your body. That’s how you stay available. That’s how you earn that four-year, $211 million contract, the biggest free-agent deal in franchise history.

The Phillies had a similar issue this past season, when reliever José Alvarado was suspended 80 games in the middle of the season, as well as for the entire postseason, for taking an unvetted weight loss drug last winter. There is simply no excuse.

It’s as if all that losing on purpose — The Process — cursed the ball club indefinitely.

Since the day Harris bought them in 2011, the Sixers have been an entertaining, if star-crossed, clown show. Much of it has been of their own doing. Following the Andrew Bynum deal in 2012, then the worst trade in Philadelphia history, roster builders Sam Hinkie, Bryan Colangelo, and now Daryl Morey have drafted poorly, have been held hostage by unaccomplished stars, and have hired ill-suited coaches.

Home-grown cornerstone players declined to properly develop: Nerlens Noel and Ben Simmons refused to learn to shoot, while Embiid, moody and undisciplined, refused to mature into the jaw-dropping professional he might have become.

But Noel, whom they drafted over Giannis Antetokounmpo, Embiid, whom they drafted over Nikola Jokić, Jahlil Okafor, whom they drafted over Kristaps Porziņģis, and Simmons, whom they drafted over Jaylen Brown, all were injured almost as soon as they were assigned a jersey number.

By his third season at the helm, Hinkie, brilliant in some aspects, proved unable to manage a franchise. Colangelo turned out to be more than just a nepotistic mis-hire: He and his wife were accused of using burner social media accounts to criticize Sixers players. Yes, you read that correctly. Former coach Doc Rivers so seriously offended Simmons that he forced his way out of town. James Harden did the same thing after Morey, who’d traded for him and extended his contract once, declined to offer Harden the maximum-salary money he believed Morey had promised.

There have been dozens of other rake-stepping incidents by the Sixers. None is more consequential than the Sixers’ aggressive initiative to build a downtown arena, only to pull the rug from the project at the last minute and instead build in South Philly.

That happened about this time last year in the middle of yet another lost season for Embiid, who played just 19 games as he dealt with a knee injury that limited him the previous season, but which did not deter him from a meaningless appearance in the 2024 Olympics. George and Maxey also missed significant time due to injury last season.

But, as of this past week, things seemed to be rounding into form for the franchise. The Big Three played together Thursday, and, after a disastrous start to the season when playing together, they improved to 9-8.

Embiid had played in 20 of 27 games, averaging 27.9 points, 8.2 rebounds, and 32.8 minutes. George played in 27 of 35 games, averaging 16.0 points, 5.1 rebounds, and 30.5 minutes.

For the first time since the end of the 2022-23 season, when they squandered a 3-2 lead in the second round of the Easter Conference playoffs, things looked legitimately promising.

Then, on Saturday, George got banned until March.

You know what they say about karma.

Rhymes with witch.