The Philadelphia 76ers have spent months getting told their whole setup wouldn’t hold up. Too many high-usage stars.
Not enough room for everyone. The “one ball” idea, critics said, would wreck the championship picture before it ever got off the ground.
Instead, Philadelphia has opened the season by making all that noise look premature.
After beating the Detroit Pistons on the road, the Sixers moved to 8-1 and pushed their lead atop the Eastern Conference to 1.5 games. The early formula has been a “surprisingly” selfless one, and it has worked far better than the skeptics expected.
Now the pushback has shifted. If it isn’t the roster, the argument goes, then maybe it’s the schedule.
That line of thinking doesn’t really hold up either. ESPN’s strength of schedule index has Philadelphia at No. 11, which puts the slate a little above the middle of the pack. And if you look at who they’ve already seen, this hasn’t been some gift-wrapped opening run.
Three of the first seven opponents were playoff teams from last season. Milwaukee, Chicago, and Indiana missed the postseason, but Charlotte finished ninth in the crowded East race, just one game behind the Sixers.
And the first 10 games of the 2026-2027 NBA season would include a heavy dose of familiar high-end competition once Friday’s meeting with the Cleveland Cavaliers wraps up: two games against the Knicks, two against the Pistons, and two against the Cavaliers. That’s more than half the stretch.
The idea that those teams were somehow flimsy doesn’t match what they did a year ago. None of them went through major core changes in the offseason, and all three were coming off real success.
Detroit, even after a shaky playoff showing, still went seven games with Cleveland in the second round after barely getting out of the first. The Pistons were the No. 1 team in the Eastern Conference last season and the only club to reach 60 wins.
Cleveland finished 52-30 and reached the Eastern Conference Finals before getting blasted by the Knicks, who rolled through the postseason from start to finish.
And then there’s New York. The Knicks are the NBA’s most recent champ, and their primary rotation barely changed, with only a backup center departing.
As LeBron said on Wednesday in Detroit, it’s far too early to be talking about the Finals if you’re the Sixers. That much is obvious in early November. But Philadelphia has already done enough to deserve real credit: it has knocked down the preseason doubts without leaning on some soft path to do it.
In Other News...
Sixers Fans Have Seen This Before As Porzingis Saga Nears A Harsh End
Kristaps Porzingis is back in the kind of limbo that NBA fans know can turn messy fast. The Golden State Warriors are not paying his salary while he is sidelined by a health condition, and with the February 11 trade deadline approaching, his contract is still movable if the front office decides to act. For Philadelphia fans, the whole thing has an uncomfortable familiar feel, even if the details are not the same as the Ben Simmons standoff that once dominated the league conversation.
Porzingis has not asked out, but the uncertainty around his future is hard to ignore, especially with retirement reportedly part of the discussion. The Warriors can keep exploring trade options, yet the bigger question is whether there is still a path back to the floor at all. For Sixers followers, it is another reminder of how quickly a roster issue can shift from a basketball matter into something far more complicated. [Read more 🡒]
76ers Keep Rolling But One Lineup Issue Just Got Harder To Ignore
The 76ers kept their early-season surge going with a 112-106 win over the Pistons, pushing them to 8-1 and the best record in the NBA. Jaylen Brown delivered a season-high 30 points and seven rebounds, while Joel Embiid added 26 points and 15 rebounds as Philadelphia leaned on its top-end talent to close out another tight game.
Still, the rotation picture is starting to draw more attention as the wins pile up. Anfernee Simons had a limited impact with minimal playing time, and the way Philadelphia is handling that group will be worth watching as the schedule gets tougher and the margins get thinner. Even with the team rolling, the balance of minutes and roles is becoming harder to overlook. [Read more 🡒]
Hawks Frontcourt Suddenly Looks Unsettled At The Worst Time
The frontcourt picture around Atlanta has taken another hit at an awkward moment, with Dominick Barlow meeting with a specialist to evaluate his back injury and now projected to need another 10 to 12 days before he can get back to on-court work. For a team already trying to sort out its rotation, that kind of delay only adds to the uncertainty, especially with the schedule offering little time to settle things down.
For Philadelphia, the ripple effects are worth watching because Adem Bona is now dealing with a neck injury of his own and is listed as doubtful for the next game. The Sixers have been leaning on depth and flexibility in the middle, and any missed time from Bona only sharpens the focus on how these injury situations stack up across the league, from Jalen Johnsons questionable status in Atlanta to the other frontcourt returns and debuts popping up elsewhere. [Read more 🡒]