17 Games Left: It might actually be time for the Sixers to stop trying to win basketball games

It’s pretty wild that the Sixers are in another very familiar nightmare to close out the regular season.

They are 35-30, sitting in eighth place in the Eastern Conference, and are now playing a stretch of basketball without Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, Kelly Oubre Jr., and Paul George.

One starter available with 17 games left. The season is on the line right now and this roster is held together with duct tape.

Here is where things stand on the Sixers injury front.

Oubre will be re-evaluated in about two weeks. Maxey is three weeks away from his next evaluation. Paul George is not eligible to return until March 25 when his 25-game suspension concludes.

Embiid is expected back on March 14 from an oblique injury, which is at least something. VJ Edgecombe returned from his back injury on Tuesday and has been carrying a massive workload all season, ranking among the league leaders in minutes played.

Adem Bona has been downgraded from questionable to out against the Pistons. The Sixers also added Andre Drummond to the injury report as he is listed as questionable due to back spasms.

Genuinely just one thing after another with this team.

The Sixers are half a game ahead of the Hawks for the eighth seed, one game behind Toronto in seventh, and 1.5 games behind Miami in sixth, which is the last spot out of the play-in.

The problem is Atlanta is currently riding a seven-game winning streak, the hottest team in the NBA right now. Charlotte is also just two games back and LaMelo Ball is out there playing backyard basketball.

On the other end, the Magic are in fifth and only 1.5 games ahead of Philadelphia. There are 3.5 games separating the fifth seed Magic from the tenth seed Hornets right now.

Sixers Remaining Schedule:

1. at Pistons
2. Nets
3. Trail Blazers
4. at Nuggets
5. at Kings
6. at Jazz
7. Thunder
8. Bulls
9. at Hornets
10. at Heat
11. at Wizards
12. T-Wolves
13. Pistons
14. at Spurs
15. at Rockets
16. at Pacers
17. Bucks

There is good news and bad news here.

The good news is that the Nets, Blazers, Jazz, Wizards, Kings, Pacers, and Bulls are all on this schedule and Philadelphia should beat every single one of them. That is seven games the Sixers need to bank.

The bad news is everything else on the schedule. The Pistons are the number one seed in the East at 46-18 and show up twice. The Spurs are 48-17. The Thunder are the best team in basketball. The Nuggets, Rockets, Timberwolves, and Heat are all legitimate roadblocks and none of those games are going to be easy with this roster.

The saving grace is that the next five games after tonight are the Nets, Blazers, Nuggets, Kings, and Jazz. That stretch is manageable. The Sixers need to take care of business there before the schedule gets unforgiving.

None of this changes the reality that this is a brutal closing stretch for a team that is going to be leaning on Cameron Payne and a supporting cast that looks like a bad fever dream from the darkest days of The Process.

Which brings up the question that nobody really wants to answer out loud but everyone is thinking.

The Sixers Question: To tank or not to tank?

Hear me out. Right now the Sixers would own a top-4 protected pick. The bottom 14 teams in the NBA make the lottery and Philadelphia currently sits at 16th.

If they were to go 2-15 the rest of the way, assuming the teams above them hover around .500, they would move to 11th place and carry a 9.4% chance at a top-four pick and a 2% shot at the first overall pick.

Yes, 2% is slim. The Dallas Mavericks won the lottery last year at 1.8%. Stranger things have happened. The worst tanking scenario is going 7-10 the rest of the way. That would land them at 14th with only a 2.4% chance at a top-four pick. Not exactly worth blowing the season up for.

Here is the thing though. The teams around them in the standings are not exactly tanking either. The Clippers are in 15th on a two-game win streak. The Hawks are practically reverse tanking at seven straight wins. The Hornets are 7-3 in their last ten. The Sixers might not even need to try that hard. They just cannot go on a heater over the final weeks.

The case against tanking is real too.

The Great Tank of 2013 to 2016 did not exactly end the way anyone drew it up. And even if the Sixers tank their way into the lottery, Oklahoma City owns picks 5 through 30, which means anything outside the top four is worthless anyway.

So what is the actual play here?

Even if Philadelphia survives the play-in and gets into the first round, they are looking at the Pistons or the Celtics. They are 0-2 against Detroit this season with two games left. They are 2-2 against Boston and that is still without Jayson Tatum playing.

The path is not exactly lined with roses.

We are basically being asked to believe that Embiid, Maxey, and George, three stars who have not played together in over a month and have barely played together consistently all season, along with Kelly Oubre Jr, are going to come back during the playoffs and suddenly perform like a team.

That is a lot of faith to extend to a franchise that has been doing this to us for a decade.

That means the Sixers are yet again, stuck in purgatory

Good enough to hang around the playoff picture, not good enough to feel confident about any of it. A tradition unlike any other in the city of Philadelphia.

Two types of luck on the table: Lottery luck or the luck of health and performance. Neither is guaranteed and both are a real risk. With this roster banged up and the odds stacked against a real playoff run, this might actually be one of the rare seasons where losing a few games does more for the franchise than winning them.

The NBA tends to reward teams that do not openly tank all season. Philadelphia has played themselves into a position where they might not have to. They just need to stop accidentally winning.

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