The Preseason Doesn’t Tell The Whole Story For Philadelphia 76ers

By Josh Wilson | Oct 20, 2015

Christian Wood, Jahlil Okafor, Nerlens Noel, Nik Stauskas, Pierre Jackson, and Tony Wroten. These aren’t even all of the names, but they’re some of the ones that have been bitten by the injury bug this preseason. The list for the Sixers injury history is already long this year, and the regular season has yet to begin.

It makes fans wonder, is this how the season is going to go? Is this what we’re going to see all year, injury after injury pile up?

It’s alarming, but it’s doesn’t tell the whole injury story. After losing Joel Embiid for another whole season, it’s quite possible that the Sixers are being cautious about injuries with the fear of losing another key player for a long time. A lot of these injuries would probably be easy to play with in the regular season, but since the preseason doesn’t mean much at all, it’s easy to give guys a day off, and wait out the healing process a little bit longer.

What we’ve seen in the preseason hasn’t been fantastic. It started off good, with the Sixers winning two of their first three games, but in their most recent three games, have lost all of them. They have one game left, leaving them with the best possible record being 3-4 for the preseason (still a better winning percentage than in the regular season last year).

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Since the preseason is supposed to be a taste of how the regular season will go, 76ers fans are clearly wondering, “is this how the year will go?” It must be kept in mind that, although the preseason means more to the Sixers than it does to higher caliber teams like the Golden State Warriors (defending champions) and the Cleveland Cavaliers (defending Eastern Conference champions), this preseason won’t tell the entire story.

Of the six game that have been played, we’ve only seen Jah in four, and he’s the player that’s expected to have a huge impact this upcoming season. We’ve only seen Okafor and Noel (a high expectation front court) play together three times. As for the starting five for the regular season? A lot of them we haven’t seen at all this preseason, assuming that Kendall Marshall or Tony Wroten gets the start at point guard, and Nik Stauskas gets the start at shooting guard.

That leaves us with a big realization: we have yet to see the real Philadelphia 76ers this year. Only three times have we seen the front court play together, and zero times have we seen the hypothetical starting five play together. Zero. There’s no possible way that the team we’ve been seeing in the preseason is anything like the team we will be seeing in January.

It’s unrealistic to expect seven exhibition games to show us what we need to know about the regular season, especially when injuries are a factor. The bottom line is that we have only gotten a small taste of this Sixers team.

That small taste has, in some cases, been very good. Isaiah Canaan is showing he can be a good alternative to the point guards that are out with injury, and Jah and Nerlz seem to be working well together in the games that they do play. But that small taste leaves a lot to the imagination, and it’s going to be better once we can be certain about some more things regarding this Sixers team.

Next: Sixers Management Quiets The Noise, Fans Should Not Be Worried

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