The Philadelphia 76ers got absolutely bludgeoned by the Orlando Magic on Tuesday night, continuing an essentially decade-long trend of being uncompetitive when Joel Embiid fails to suit up. The Sixers are 5-6 in the 11 games Embiid has missed this year, which is a better winning rate than they have ever had without him, but it is still evident the team is incapable of bailing the water out of the sinking ship when he misses extended periods of time.
Not often is an NBA team able or supposed to overcome the loss of their best player. This is not as much a referendum on the Sixers as it is a reality of the situation. But when you consider that the Sixers are coached by a former champion who had to navigate around the only other superstar in the league as oft-injured as Joel Embiid en route to winning the title, it becomes a little harder to digest just how bad they have been without him since Nick Nurse arrived ahead of the 2023-24 season.
Taking an even bigger step back to include two more current employees of Harris-Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, two of the more innovative and successful executives of the past 15 years, Bob Myers and Daryl Morey, also have never truly been able to solve the absence of their best player.
All stats are courtesy of StatMuse.
Bob Myers was promoted to general manager of the Golden State Warriors ahead of the 2012-13 season. Sure, he is a four-time NBA Champion as a GM and multi-time NBA Executive of the Year, and he made the franchise-defining decision to hire Steve Kerr as his coach. But from the moment he became acting GM to the moment he stepped down after the 2022-23 season, his superstar, Steph Curry, missed a total of 173 games. Their record in those? 67-106.
Daryl Morey identified and traded for James Harden before the 2012-13 season to be the new face of the Houston Rockets. Morey's Rockets and Myers' Warriors would go on to be the two defining teams of the Western Conference through the end of the 2010s, facing off against one another four times in the playoffs- including twice in the Western Conference Finals.
Harden was a true iron man during his tenure in Houston, missing only 33 total games between the 2012-13 and 2019-20 seasons before Morey left for the Philadelphia 76ers. For an organization that made every move with the intent of maximizing Harden's style of play, amassing an 18-15 record in those games is honestly pretty good.
Nick Nurse's first season as an NBA head coach for the Toronto Raptors eventually would end in a championship. Some great foresight by former Raptors' GM, Masai Ujiri, to take a chance on trading for Kawhi Leonard in a move that greatly upset their fanbase because he traded away homegrown, beloved star, DeMar DeRozan, would be the major catalyst that led them to lift the trophy.
Leonard put on one of the greatest individual playoff runs in history to bring Toronto their first and only NBA title, but getting him there healthy was the key. Leonard started to break down during his last year in San Antonio physically, and quite frankly, has not had a sustained period of great health since. But the Raptors, at that point, were a ready-made team that had been knocking on LeBron James' doorstep for years, and when James bolted for Los Angeles, acquiring Leonard made the Raptors the best team in the East. Believe it or not, they boasted an imposing 17-5 record in the 22 games Leonard missed that year.
When Daryl Morey established himself in Philadelphia, he tried to recreate his philosophy of building out a team around Joel Embiid, similarly to what he did with Harden in the Houston days. That even included trading for James Harden again to pair with Embiid, and their unstoppable pick-and-roll combination helped Embiid win the league MVP. But as mentioned earlier, the Sixers have long had a winning problem when Joel Embiid does not play, and that has not changed, no matter who Morey has surrounded him with.
Since Morey took over as the Sixers' GM, the team is 64-104 without Joel Embiid. Nurse's coaching regime counts for 37-80 of that total record after this most recent loss to the Magic. And, of course, with Bob Myers signing on to be the President of HBSE right before the start of this regular season, all three of Myers, Morey, and Nurse hold this year's 5-6 record without Embiid.
Leaving out the combined losses Nurse and Morey share and the 11 games Myers now shares with them, too, adding up all the wins and losses each has accumulated over their respective careers when their main superstar is not available, comes out to a 166-230 record. That is good for a 41.9 win percentage, which is roughly equivalent to a 34-win regular-season team.
Aside from the 2018-19 season in Toronto, where everything else around Kawhi Leonard was set on a silver platter for Nick Nurse, the Sixers' collective braintrust has not proven their ability to effectively pivot when the going gets tough. Maybe all the ghosts of failure's past will allow them to sit down in a room together and put all their minds to work on what can be done to stem the tide, but if the first quarter of this season is any indication, it may be a while until that happens.
