The Philadelphia 76ers’ schedule for next season is already drawing fire, and the complaints are landing squarely on the league office. With LeBron James now in Philadelphia after signing a two-year, $8 million contract this summer, the 76ers are being talked about like a title threat - especially after the team also traded for Jaylen Brown from the Boston Celtics.
What has stirred up the most noise, though, is the way the schedule is laid out. Philadelphia has just 13 back-to-back games, which ties it for the fewest in the NBA with the Denver Nuggets, San Antonio Spurs, Phoenix Suns and New York Knicks. Former NBA guard Deron Williams said that setup deserves a hard look on the latest episode of “To The Baha.”
“There needs to be an investigation. I’d be mad as h**l if I’m the rest of these teams,” Williams said.
“They’re setting it up for Embiid and LeBron. … That load management on the team’s gonna be crazy.”
“LeBron and Embiid might not play many games together for most of the season.”
Williams wasn’t alone in taking issue with it. Theo Pinson, another former NBA player, also weighed in and said the league is setting up Philadelphia to reach the Finals.
Robert Horry added his own criticism on the August 19 episode of the “Big Shot Bob Podcast,” saying the schedule break feels unusually friendly to James and the 76ers.
“I don’t know what LeBron has on ESPN or Adam Silver, but a lot of times he gets a lot of favorable stuff. I’m like, ‘Dn. Like, he know where the fking bodies are buried, boy,'” Horry said.
Horry also said he wants to see how the back-to-backs are spaced out.
“I want to see who their back-to-backs are against. If their back-to-backs are going like, ‘Oh, you got a back-to-back in New York, then your next day is Brooklyn,’ I’m going to call bulls**t on that because we also know the East, they an hour train ride from each other.”
The first back-to-back for the 76ers is set for October 24 and 25, when they host the Milwaukee Bucks and Detroit Pistons at Xfinity Mobile Arena.
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For Philadelphia, the bigger takeaway is how much of the drama around Brown and Tatum has lived more in the noise around the Celtics than in anything public between the players themselves. There were reports of tension involving Brown and Bostons management, but no confirmed sign of a real rift with Tatum, and that history matters now that Brown is in a 76ers uniform and every layer of his rivalry with Boston will be watched a little more closely. [Read more 🡒]