The Philadelphia 76ers are back in the playoffs after a one-year hiatus, marking the eighth time in nine seasons they find themselves playing meaningful basketball. Also, for the eighth time in nine seasons, those meaningful basketball games will not be played with a fully healthy roster, and more questions than answers are bound to come, whenever and however they inevitably lose along the way.
This year's playoff field is ripe with the wily veteran teams that have been here for years, and a nice fresh crop of young teams that figure to stay in this space for years to come. In typical Philadelphia fan fashion, we find victories through the downfall of our rivals and the ghosts of our past. Overcoming the mental hurdle of watching old fan favorites contribute to other teams' wins also leaves a sour taste in our mouths.
After analyzing all other 15 teams in this year's playoff field, here is a comprehensive hater's guide to watching the NBA Playoffs and who to root for after the Sixers.
This will be the fourth time the Sixers have faced off against the Celtics in the playoffs over the last nine years, and barring a true miracle, will be the fourth time they get sent home by the Celtics, too.
The Celtics broke through and won the title two years ago. Now with Jayson Tatum back, they have a great chance to be the first team since the Warriors to win multiple championships with their core. If they pull off that feat before the reigning-champion Thunder or the Denver Nuggets, it would make Sixers fans physically ill.
There are not many redeeming qualities to this New York Knicks squad. Jalen Brunson grifts for fouls at a rate that has proven unsustainable when the refs swallow their whistles in the postseason- just ask Joel Embiid or James Harden. They have a belief among themselves that they can truly win it all, which is admirable, but the defensive limitations posed by Brunson and KAT add a layer of delusion to that belief.
The Villanova Knicks were a cool theory when they were assembled. Philly fans loved the idea of their former two-time collegiate champions teaming up on the biggest stage, close enough to home to still check in on how they are doing. Then the 2024 Playoffs happened, and all the love for what the Knicks built went by the wayside.
Ironically, the Thunder were the number one team on this list heading into last year's playoffs, the team Philly fans should be rooting for. They were an organization that never won a title before last year, carried themselves the right way, and had former Sixer, Isaiah Joe, whom fans in the city long believed could have developed into a nice player in Philly.
Turn the calendar to 2026, and they are reigning champions, have assumed somewhat of a villain role across the league, and to make matters even worse, now employ Jared McCain, whom Sixers fans believed even more so as a future building block of their franchise.
We still love Jared and wish him the best, but if we have to see a locker room TikTok dance of him holding the Larry O'Brien Trophy while being showered in champagne, someone is going to have to pay for their sins in Philadelphia.
Before the trade deadline in February, the Cavaliers had all the makings of a team Sixers fans could get behind. There were no negative associations with the roster, and Donovan Mitchell is one of the best watches on the playoff stage.
Everything changed when they dealt Darius Garland to the Clippers for former Sixer James Harden. It's tough to blame Harden much for his exit from Philadelphia, but one can certainly hold his playoff woes against him. It was hard enough to watch a regular-season dynamo just go invisible in the biggest moments when he was the guy in Houston. Suffering through Games 6 and 7 of the series against the Celtics in 2023 after he single-handedly won the Sixers Games 1 and 4 in the same series was the final straw.
The Pistons were never going to find themselves too high on this list simply because of Tobias Harris, but they had done enough throughout the course of the year to earn a better spot than where they ended up. Then, Harris struck again.
Just a couple of weeks ago, with Detroit in town for their final game of the year against the Sixers, Harris yelled at his old home crowd to enjoy the Play-In Tournament after being serenaded with boo birds the entire night. He deserved to gloat, but if the Pistons seasons Crumbls like a cookie, you will not find Sixers fans complaining.
The Nuggets are the only team on this list whose ranking is based solely on the roster and on-court product. The Nuggets rank so low on this list because of their fanbase's rivalry with Sixers fans over their respective centers.
Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid fought tooth and nail for four consecutive seasons over the NBA MVP award. Denver and Philadelphia fans backed their guy, and the war lines were drawn. Over the past couple of seasons, that individual battle and the emotions that came with it have dissipated, but the vitriol for Nuggets fans remains the same. We do not want to see them happy.
The Hawks really took off after trading Trae Young and opening up their offense to be more free-flowing and interconnected. They are young, athletic, fast, and generally fun to watch, but they have some fatal flaws.
For one, the franchise has always stood in the way of the Sixers' easiest and most obvious path to the Eastern Conference Finals in the past decade. You could certainly argue the Sixers stood in their own way, and while that is true, the Hawks are the ones who advanced, so they are guilty by association.
Buddy Hield did not get much of a run when he was a Sixer, and when he did, he was largely ineffective. But when he lit up the Knicks in game 6 in their playoff series two years ago in what proved to be the Sixers final game of the season, it was more of a slap in the face than it was a welcome sight.
The Suns were a nice story this year, and first-year head coach Jordan Ott appears to be one of the game's bright young minds. The Suns have Haywood Highsmith, a former Sixer with no reason to hate on. Beloved Villanova Wildcat Collin Gillespie has also been a revelation for them this season.
The Suns get brought down on this list because of Dillon Brooks and Grayson Allen- two of the more controversial figures in the game of basketball in the last decade. It is hard to truly root for the Suns with those two guys liable to cause shenanigans at any time. Their playoff stay will be short, but their first-round opponent, the OKC Thunder, better watch out for some patented foolishness.
The Blazers are a conundrum here because we do not inherently dislike any of the three former Sixers on their roster, but if you care more about the name on the front of the jersey than the back, you understand why they are here.
Jrue Holiday is one of the craftiest guards of this entire generation and has been a pleasure to watch play a crucial role on two championship teams, neither of which, of course, were the Sixers. The second of those championships came as the starting point guard of the Boston Celtics, so that will always sting.
It is not Matisse Thybulle's fault for what happened in the 2021 Hawks series. But he will always be the recipient of the Ben Simmons pass that has been cattle-branded in our brains for nearly five years now.
Jerami Grant has made a nice career for himself, but he could also have been the perfect addition to the Sixers' roster when they were looking to compete for titles in a similar way to what OG Anunoby has done for the Knicks.
There is nothing wrong with the Raptors roster, so this is as high as they can reasonably go on this list. But they have to be dinged for the battle scars we have from 2019 and 2022.
The single most agonizing event of the Joel Embiid era was losing Game 7 to the quadruple-bounce Kawhi shot and all that came with it. Losing in heartbreak, losing to the eventual champion, and of course, it eventually led to Jimmy Butler's famed quote, "TOBIAS HARRIS OVER ME?!"
Then, and it is more Doc Rivers' fault than anybody else's, Pascal Siakam elbowed Joel Embiid in the face in the deciding game of the first-round series in 2022 when Embiid should have been pulled already. He would miss the first two games against the Miami Heat in the second round and never really found his footing in that series as the Sixers fell in six games.
There's something hateable about the Magic. They are boring, antiquated, and more often than not appear to be having a bad time out on the court. Another team without real roster flaws from the Sixers fan standpoint, but everybody- maybe even Orlando fans themselves- should be hoping they do not have to see too much more of them.
Remember when Andre Drummond squared up with Wendell Carter Jr?
LeBron James is the most interesting player in this entire playoff field. He is tasked with essentially winning a first-round series against the Houston Rockets alone before hopefully having his co-stars, Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves, return for what would be a star-studded epic against the OKC Thunder.
Luka Doncic and the 2024 Mavericks were the last team to defeat the Thunder in the playoffs, so it would be pretty incredible to see the reigning champs go at it against the best player of the generation and the last man who conquered them. LeBron's legacy is secure no matter what happens, but he can still bolster his GOAT case at the age of 41 if the Lakers win the title.
It will be interesting to see what the Spurs can accomplish in their first playoff run of the Wemby-era. Their path is going to be pretty tough if they want to win the championship, but when the intensity is at its highest in the playoffs, maybe Wemby will just suffocate every opposing offense that comes his way.
Wemby is going to be a preeminent force in the NBA for a very long time, but we are not too far removed from Joel Embiid putting 70 points on his head, and it's too early to entertain conversations about him already being better than Embiid was at his MVP peak.
The Wolves have everything you want when looking for an extra team to root for. They have one of the best young superstars in the game, have a roster of mostly likable guys, and have been knocking on the door for a couple of years now, so it would be nice to see them get over the hump.
The only reason they do not top the list is because of Donte DiVincenzo and his cold-blooded assassination of the Sixers in the 2024 Playoffs against the Knicks. The original fourth member of the Villanova Knicks, before being shipped away to Minnesota, we are happy to take him back in ways we are not with the ones still playing in New York. Julius Randle gets a pass because he had season-ending surgery before that series and did not play.
Basketball purists may hope Denver beats Minnesota to set up a Jokic/Wemby second-round extravaganza, but this is not a purist's list.
The Rockets have the perfect combination of no roster problems and enough general intrigue to be the team Philadelphia fans should root for the most outside of the Sixers. This could be Kevin Durant's last chance to really make a run as the best player on a team and put a stamp on his resume that does not have a Golden State Warriors asterisk after it.
They may not be the most fun team to watch given their offensive limitations, but the storylines they could amass this playoffs make up for that in spades. The first round is KD versus LeBron. If the Rockets advance, he will play the Thunder in the playoffs for the first time in his career, and given the history there with him and the fanbase after his departure in 2016, that will be must-see television. If he somehow takes down the champs, he gets Wemby, Jokic, or Edwards in the Conference Finals.
If this is KD's final run as the unquestioned guy, he is going to have to earn it in every which way.
