When Nick Nurse took over as the Sixers’ head coach ahead of the 2023-24 season, players were buzzing with excitement about his energy and creativity. But with Joel Embiid and Paul George cycling in and out of the lineup over the past two seasons, Nurse hasn’t gotten many chances to show off that side of himself. His experimentation with lineups was more out of necessity than anything else.
That shouldn’t be the case this coming season. Between Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, Jaylen Brown, VJ Edgecombe and some guy named LeBron James, the Sixers have more top-end talent than they’ve had arguably in decades. But their talent doesn’t just stop at their starting five. They’re far deeper than they’ve been at any point in the Nurse era, too.
After an up-and-down regular season last year, Nurse already started getting back in the good graces of Sixers fans by helping orchestrate the Sixers’ thrilling 3-1 series comeback against the Boston Celtics in the first round of the playoffs. Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla was so rattled by the end of that series that he started Baylor Scheierman, Luka Garza and Ron Harper Jr. in Game 7. On purpose!
Granted, the good vibes didn’t last long. A second-round sweep at the hands of the eventual champion New York Knicks left the Sixers looking rudderless heading into the offseason. Of course, that was before new president of basketball operations Mike Gansey pulled off the coup of all coups by landing both Brown and James.
Those two were the headliners of the offseason for obvious reasons, but they weren’t the Sixers’ only key additions. Dean Wade, Anfernee Simons, Ariel Hukporti and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope could all play key roles off the bench this season. Gansey also resisted the temptation to draft for fit over talent when he took Labaron Philon Jr. at No. 22 overall, giving the Sixers another ball-handler behind Maxey and Edgecombe.
It’s now on Nurse to figure out how all of these pieces will fit together.
Will the ‘mad scientist’ show up?
Nurse made a name for himself in Toronto when he helped guide the Raptors to their first-ever championship in 2019. His decision to deploy a box-and-one defense against Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry in the NBA Finals that year was some true sicko stuff.
“Trying new stuff, being innovative, is who Nick is,” then-Raptors president Masai Ujiri said about Nurse during his introductory press conference in Toronto in 2018. “You can tell he’s a tactician who really thinks the game.”
That innovation hasn’t been on display as much as expected in Philly… yet. The Sixers had 54 different starting lineups in 2024-25 (!), but that was a byproduct of injuries more than anything else. Much like Doc Rivers before him, Nurse flirted with the idea of double-big lineups featuring Embiid and either Andre Drummond or Adem Bona, but Embiid and Bona played only 46 minutes together last year, while Embiid and Drummond shared the floor for only eight minutes.
This season, Nurse should have plenty of chances to lean back into his experimental nature.
Nurse already confirmed that he plans to deploy LeBron as an “offense creator” who will “bring the ball up the floor and try to create for himself and others,” but Maxey and Edgecombe should get some ball-handling reps as well. Being able to use LeBron, Maxey and Edgecombe both as on- and off-ball weapons should make the Sixers that much more unpredictable on offense, so it’ll be imperative for Nurse not to lean solely on LeBron as the main ball-handler.
Nurse already began moving away from Embiid as the Sixers’ offensive fulcrum last season, and the Sixers’ offseason overhaul should only further expedite that process. This will be the first time in Embiid’s career where he doesn’t have to score 20-plus points on any given night to give the Sixers even a puncher’s chance of winning. Can Nurse get him to buy into scaling back his offensive role even more and instead get him to spend his energy on defense, rebounding, screen-setting and boxing out?
And how will he deploy Brown, who’s fresh off a career year as the No. 1 option in Boston? Brown’s handle isn’t tight enough to merit running the offense through him again, but he’s a legitimate weapon in isolations. He’s also big and physical enough to back down smaller defenders. Finding the balance between that and keeping the ball moving might be among Nurse’s greatest challenges this year.
Pace is the other big question looming over the Sixers offense. Maxey, James and Brown were second, third and fourth, respectively, in transition points per game last season, and Edgecombe’s youth and athleticism should make him a dynamic weapon in the open floor as well. Embiid… not so much. How does Nurse blend those two styles together?
While the Sixers’ starting five figure to open and close games together, they’ll also have plenty of time intermingling with bench players. It’ll be on Nurse to figure out which combinations and skill sets fit best together.
He did lean into more three-guard lineups with Maxey, Edgecombe and Quentin Grimes last year—again, mostly out of necessity—but will he try out units with three of Maxey, Edgecombe, Simons, KCP and Philon? How will the forward rotation shake out behind Brown and James? What’s the optimal role for Wade and Dominick Barlow this year? Do Jabari Walker and Justin Edwards factor into the rotation at all?
While it’s imperative for the starting five to develop chemistry—after all, they’ll be playing the lion’s share of the minutes if (when?) the Sixers make it to the playoffs—Nurse needs to lean into his experimental side during the regular season, especially early on. The Sixers will have an opportunity to address any holes in their roster at the trade deadline or on the buyout market, but they first need to identify their biggest needs before looking to rectify them.
Luckily, Nurse’s experience with integrating Kawhi Leonard into the 2018-19 Raptors could help him this season.
“Nurse was brought in to deliver outside-the-box thinking to a group that had grown stagnant, and accordingly, he was all over the map in his first go-around,” William Lou of Yahoo Sports wrote in 2019. “He treated the entire regular season as one great experiment, shuffling through 22 different starting lineups while managing a never-ending slew of injuries.” (Sound familiar?)
“The Raptors lacked the consistency and continuity that powered them under [former head coach Dwane] Casey, but it was a concerted sacrifice made in the name of versatility,” Lou added. “The ability to adapt was thought to be an advantage come playoff time.”
During his introductory press conference with the Raptors, Nurse specifically said that he wanted to get more creative defensively “so we can try to be ready for more things in the playoffs.” The box-and-one in the 2019 Finals was a total wild card, but Nurse used a double-big lineup with Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol in the Raptors’ second-round series against the Sixers to flip the script after they fell into a 2-1 hole.
The Sixers will face a variety of threats throughout the Eastern Conference this year, all of whom present different challenges. The Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami Heat and Indiana Pacers will all trot out double-big lineups, while elite guards and wings and a five-out starting unit will be the New York Knicks’ calling card. Befitting their name, the Pacers figure to push the pace and overwhelm opponents with depth, while the Boston Celtics will once again likely look to leverage the math battle by bombing away from deep.
The Sixers need to be prepared for all of the stylistic challenges that their potential playoff opponents can present. The regular season is an 82-game crucible to get them ready for that. While they need to focus on winning as many games as possible for playoff-seeding purposes, using the same lineups and combinations night after night won’t do much to get them ready for the postseason.
In 2022, Ujiri described Nurse as a “mad scientist” who “lives, sleeps and drinks the game.” He’s had plenty of time this offseason to be in his lab figuring out the best ways to deploy the new talent he has at his disposal. In a few weeks, we’ll get to see what he’s cooked up.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM.
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