I don't get the love affair with Nurse at all. He got lucky his first year had Kawhi and win a title and then got worse in Toronto. Philly had their worst regular season since 2017 and their worst playoff appearance since Boston swept them in 2020 in Brown's last year. Nurse is not a good coach.
Any thoughts on why Philly may have had a down year? Any relevant factors?
The obvious answer is the Embiid injury derailed them. They were 2nd in the East before that, they ended up 7th.
Looking more into it, they probably had issues integrating the players they signed at the deadline (e.g. Hield) into the team when Embiid came back. I feel like Embiid is a difficult player to play alongside. He has so much gravity, both on the opposition and on this team as well. I looked at his usage this season on Basketball-reference and compared him with Luka this season, Shaq in 2000, Kobe in 2009, Jordan in 1992 and LeBum in 2012 and he's at 39.6% usage, the next is Luka at 36%, the rest are in the 31%-32%.
That can be interpreted 2 ways - Joel is a ball hog, and he doesn't have enough support so he has to do everything. Both things can also be true. If you look at each game, Joel and Maxey are usually at least 50% of the total shots taken for Philly.
I also feel like for a championship to be won the whole team needs to be willing to sacrifice. I'm not sure if Joel is willing to sacrifice, because that requires you to change your game. In fact this season before he got hurt I think he was pushing for his 2nd MVP. Back when Harden was there Harden sacrificed but he seemed to be the only one sacrificing and he ended up worse off for it, both financially and reputation wise. Maxey is trying to get paid, trying to make ASG and All NBA teams, I don't know if he's in the right stage of his career to sacrifice.
If you look at the Cs, we had a super talented team in 2018-19 that didn't go anywhere because nobody wanted to sacrifice and everyone's goals were misaligned. This year there's much more evidence of maturity and a willingness to sacrifice than there has been in the past. I don't see that with Philly.