Lotteries and injuries. It’s been more than a decade and the Philadelphia 76ers still revolve around those two things. Ping pong balls got them Joel Embiid and injuries have more or less taken him away. Ben Simmons came on a lottery night triumph and left with back issues that have seemingly never been corrected. A Markelle Fultz shoulder injury might have derailed a dynasty in its crib. The list goes on and on.
Now we’re here again. Paul George, the superstar free agent supposed to launch the Embiid era into the NBA Finals for the first time, will miss the rest of the regular season. The 76ers are, once again, playing for ping pong balls.
But that isn’t the worst thing for them, at least historically.
In 2023 I went back and measured how lucky every team has been over the course of lottery history. To some extent, lottery luck is subjective. Winning the lottery in the year that Tim Duncan becomes available is worth a half-dozen normal top picks. But on the objective side of the equation, no team has been luckier than the 76ers. As of 2023 they had gained 24 net draft slots as a result of the lottery system, more than any other team. They’ve moved up relative to their record eight times and moved down only once. This is a franchise that should be eager to hand its fate over to the basketball gods.
Paul George injury update: 76ers shut down another star at end of lost season in Philly
James Herbert
It’s just that the stakes have never been higher for them than they are now. One could argue that few teams have ever banked as much on a single lottery as the 76ers are now on this May’s drawing. As of this writing, Philadelphia has the sixth-worst record in the NBA. If its pick is lower than seventh, it goes to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Either Philadelphia gets a very high pick in a loaded draft, or it gets nothing.
Philadelphia saddled by Joel Embiid, Paul George contracts
It’s not the first time in league history this has happened. The most devastating example came in 2003, when the Grizzlies owed a top-1 protected pick to Detroit that came in at No. 2. On lottery night, Jerry West had to sit at the dais and wait to find out if he was getting LeBron James or no one at all. But the 2003 Grizzlies aren’t the 2025 Sixers. LeBron or no, their future, on paper, was reasonably bright. They had the 2000 and 2001 Rookie of the Year winners on their roster and they weren’t saddled with two of the worst contracts in the NBA.
That’s where George and Embiid are right now. The two of them combined to play 60 games this season and earn over $100 million. George has three years remaining seasons on his deal after this one. Embiid, out for the year due to his ailing knee, has four. Given the (fortunately worthwhile) max contract owed to Tyrese Maxey as well, Philadelphia is already capped out for the foreseeable future. Re-signing key free agents Quentin Grimes and Guerschon Yabusele alone might vault the Sixers into apron territory. It’s hard to imagine anyone trading for George or Embiid without sending back similarly toxic money. There probably isn’t much veteran help coming. The 76ers need reliable talent and it needs to be cheap.
This is where that lottery pick comes in. First-round rookies are cost-controlled for four years… exactly as long as the Embiid contract. The 76ers have already struck gold on a rookie whose contract aligns with George’s. They’ll have Jared McCain for a bit more than $12 million total over the next three years, which provides some of the surplus value they’ll need to survive the George deal. But McCain, promising as he is, was still a No. 16 overall pick with serious flaws and an injury of his own to monitor.
A top-six pick in this loaded class is easily Philadelphia’s most viable path to surviving this cap crunch. Look at it this way: you might not want to pay Embiid $243 million over the next four seasons… but $300 million for Embiid and Cooper Flagg combined? Well, that’s a bit more palatable.
Flagg likely won’t be worth max money until near the end of his contract, but Embiid isn’t totally dead salary himself. Perhaps in a smaller role with a strict minutes limit and a no back-to-backs edict, Philadelphia could milk a decent amount of value out of what’s left of his prime. Whether it’s Flagg or Dylan Harper or Ace Bailey or someone else, those top-six prospects have the potential to so vastly outplay their rookie contracts that fielding a viable team with two bad max contracts suddenly looks plausible.
Say for a moment that Embiid and George are truly lost causes. Maxey, McCain, Grimes and a top-six pick is still a relatively enviable young core. Building around it without cap flexibility wouldn’t be easy, but if that pick winds up popping and they hit on a few more fringe moves, the thought that Philadelphia could build a new winner around that group isn’t totally crazy.
Lottery results have enormous stakes for 76ers
The flip side is a reality 76ers fans haven’t wanted to acknowledge. If the Sixers don’t keep this pick and it goes to Oklahoma City, what does that mean for Maxey’s future?
How many 24-year-old stars are eager to spend their early primes playing for teams whose caps have been ruined by a few bad contracts? How long does it take him to start getting antsy about his future and consider different long-term homes? Remember, Maxey waited a year to sign his max deal to help Philadelphia clear the space it needed for George. He made a sacrifice here. It’s on the 76ers to reward him for it. If they can’t, someone else will.
Most lottery teams that strike out can kick the can down the road a year. For Philly, it might really be all-or-nothing. As bad as things look right now, they’re probably going to be slightly better moving forward. Let’s say the Sixers get 100 combined games from Embiid and George next year instead of 60. Let’s say Maxey is healthier down the stretch and the supporting cast is a bit better. Philadelphia is still disappointing in that world, but in a more pessimistic way. That’s the oblivion of mediocrity.
As well as Philadelphia has drafted in the middle of the first round, it can’t expect a savior to come with the No. 18 pick. Without a major talent injection somewhere, this team might be consigned to Play-In and first-round exits for the next few years. This year is, in that respect, a golden opportunity. It’s gone so wrong that it might eventually swing back around and go right. They may not get another chance like this.
It’s fitting in a way. This era of Philadelphia basketball started with Sam Hinkie embracing the lottery to a greater extent than any general manager ever had. This era may functionally end with a lottery disappointment in May, or perhaps get extended by a favorable draw. They’re in this mess because of injuries, one of the may reasons Hinkie lost his job in the first place.
It’s a debacle, but it’s exactly the sort of debacle the 76ers have been navigating since the moment The Process began.
