The 76ers Are Out Of Excuses With Health Finally Going Their Way

The 2025-26 NBA season is nearly halfway complete, and through the first half of the year, the Philadelphia 76ers find themselves in an interesting position. They very well might be contenders in the Eastern Conference.

Now you might think, how is a team that is just five games over .500 a contender? The main reason for this is that the current 76ers team is doing one thing that it feels like every 76ers team over the past decade has been unable to do. They are staying healthy.

Give Joel Embiid the majority of this blame, as the 76ers’ center has suffered some serious injuries in every season he’s competed in since he made his debut back in 2016. Embiid has missed over 400 possible games during his career, which is a significant number considering he has played in 470 games. He’s missed over 40% of his possible games over the past decade.

Also, one of the other max contract players for the 76ers, Paul George, suffered a major injury last season, missing the majority of the season and needing surgery in the offseason. George wasn’t the only 76er who missed time last year, as nearly everyone on the team missed major time last season, resulting in a bottom-five record in the league.

Keeping Joel and the rest of the team healthy and on the floor as much as possible is the key every season, and recently, when that becomes a reality, the 76ers have quite the squad on their hands.

Over the 76ers’ last five games, the team has won four of five games, with the sole loss coming in overtime against a team they should have beaten, the Denver Nuggets, without six of their main players. That game was a bad loss, but if you take out that matchup, which, if we’re being honest, was just an off night from the entire 76ers team, Philadelphia has been rolling.

They picked up three straight wins on the road at Memphis, Dallas, and in Madison Square Garden against the New York Knicks. The Knicks game was one of the best wins all season for the 76ers, as the team dominated from start to finish, despite Philadelphia leading for nearly the entire game.

Their best win over this recent win streak was this past Wednesday, when the 76ers defeated the Washington Wizards. Now the Wizards aren’t even close to a top team in the Eastern Conference; better yet, they’re a bottom-five team in the league. However, that game saw the return of Kelly Oubre Jr. and Trendon Watford to the lineup, giving them their full strength lineup for the first time since December of 2023.

In that game, seven 76ers scored 10 points or more, including all five starters. They had a consistent rotation for the first time in years, and the team looked locked in and flowed fanatically with each other. For the first time in years, the 76ers had a cohesive basketball team on the floor.

So, where do the 76ers go from here? Bascially it now falls into the hands of Nick Nurse and the rest of the 76ers coaching staff. The coaches have to get the best out of this group if they want any chance of amounting to something this year and beyond.

Throughout Nurse’s time with the 76ers, he constantly had the excuse of “well, someone is always hurt” to bail him out of bad losses or performances. Take last year, when the 76ers lost 38 of their final 47 games, some thought Nurse should be let go, but injuries to nearly the whole team saved him. That excuse is done, and now it’s on him to put in the rotations and continue to go on win streaks like this for the remainder of the year. While the goal of an NBA title may still seem like a long shot, in a year where the Eastern Conference is wide open, anything can happen.

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