With the Philadelphia 76ers turning in a season for ages, albeit for the all the wrong reasons, it is only natural for fans to demand something pretty drastic out of the front office’s pockets in the offseason. After all, this is still a team headed toward contention, if only they can manage to in a cleaner bill of health.
From how the roster looks like on paper, everything seems to be there for the team to actually get back into the winning column as soon as next season. Health, again, is a huge question mark for this ball club, but the 76ers remain a star-studded team with a good mix of highly desired role players and intriguing young prospects.
If this is the case, where can the front office realistically go to still effectuate this contrived goal of making a huge switch-up? Well, the answer is obvious — the coaching staff. Many have already called for Philly to drop the hammer on current head coach Nick Nurse, who has been at the crux of many puzzling in-game decisions and roster management amid a deflating 2024-25 campaign.
However, is this popular opinion actually imbued with reason? To be quite frank, the argument for the contrary is actually similarly strong.
The 76ers could regret it if they fired Nick Nurse this summer
There is understandably a lot of residual frustration from fans that they are funneling onto Nurse and his staff. Nowadays, it is only natural for everyone to kickstart a blame game and throw whatever name they can conjure into the ballot.
Yet however strong the case may be for the 76ers to fire Nurse, who is signed through the 2027-28 season, an objective view rejects that. Put simply, Nurse has not been dealt the chips he was expecting to have on his deck when the season began. Said even more plainly, the team has been way too shorthanded to truly gauge what the champion head coach could do with a hypothetically complete squad.
Nurse was instrumental in keeping the 76ers in actual contention when Joel Embiid was healthy and afloat when the latter was not. He was the one who unlocked a more dynamic offensive system that unleashed Tyrese Maxey and made role players shine in their streamlined roles. In short, there is really nothing to complain of with his performance last season.
This season, Nurse’s weaknesses have become more magnified. He still has the tendency to belatedly recognize the value of playing the young guns. His rotations have been funky at times. His defensive switch-ups sometimes tend to become too shrewd to evade practicality. However, he is still the best man for the job the way the team is constructed.
Should Philly yield to public “pressure” and move on from Nurse, it would lead itself into the unknown once more. They could try replacing him with a fresher option like Sam Cassell, but those are untested alternatives. Partaking into the “recycling” trend by hiring a recently fired head coach would be even worse.
In short, the Philadelphia 76ers should exercise more caution when it comes to dealing with Nick Nurse this offseason. And given the counterintuitive alternatives available to them, they might as well go against the grain and do what is most simply — keeping him on the sidelines.