The 109-104 win over Charlotte won't settle whether the Sixers are contenders, but it exposes how badly they need a real backup center before the season gets hard.
Start with what happened without LeBron James and Joel Embiid on the floor. Tyrese Maxey scored 38 points. Anfernee Simons added 19 off the bench. Dean Wade finished with just four points but grabbed five rebounds and dished a career-high 10 assists. Charlotte led by seven with under four minutes to go. Philadelphia closed the game on a decisive run over the final three-plus minutes and came away with a win that moved them to 6-1 through their first seven games. That's a good response from a team that had just played an intense NBA Cup game against the Knicks the night before.
It's also a team that almost lost to a 3-4 Hornets squad because the position behind Embiid is a mess.
Rating
RatingAdem Bona started at center for the first time all season with Embiid out, and by the time he picked up his fifth foul with under seven minutes left, the Sixers' interior defense had nothing left to lean on. It's a pattern. Bona has struggled with foul trouble since he entered the league, and it showed up again on a night when Philadelphia needed him most. The only reason this didn't turn into an ugly loss is Jabari Walker. He was questionable that morning with a knee issue and started the year buried on the depth chart, then played the game of his life filling in behind Bona. His 12 points, and the energy nobody expected from him, kept this one from slipping away. Maxey's scoring line will get the headlines, but Walker's effort saved this game.
Grinding past a team under .500, without your two best players, and only pulling ahead late, shows how thin this roster is. If Charlotte, a team with a losing record through this point in the season, can push the Sixers to the brink because their emergency center fouled out, what happens when a team with real size and a real bench takes the same shot? Philadelphia will find out in a playoff series, when it's too late to fix.
RTGMaxey did exactly what a go-to scorer is supposed to do. Wade's defense and playmaking deserve credit a four-point box score will never show. The blame belongs to whoever built this roster and left Embiid's backup spot a pile of question marks: a season-ending Achilles injury at one depth spot, a back issue at another, a center who hadn't played all year at a third. A depth crisis like that comes from failing to plan for the one thing everybody already knew was coming: your franchise center misses games.
It doesn't matter what Philadelphia wins in April if the man behind Joel Embiid keeps fouling out of winnable games in October. Fix that now, or watch a good team get bounced by a problem everyone could see coming.
