The preseason is supposed to be about building something, not hiding half of it. Yet that is exactly where the Sixers find themselves heading into Monday night’s Knicks Vs 76ers opener, with six players ruled out and the first real look at this reshaped roster immediately stripped of several of its biggest names.
At 1:53 p.m. ET on Monday, Tony Jones reported that LeBron James, Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid, Anfernee Simons, Dominick Barlow and Adem Bona were all out. That is a huge chunk of missing production, and when you add in the fact that literally half the roster is new, it becomes obvious why this game matters less as a result and more as a chemistry check.
Nick Nurse said last week he wanted to see all the starters during the preseason at some point. Fair enough. That is the right instinct in theory. The problem is that theory and practice are already drifting apart. The Sixers had a relatively healthy Blue X White Scrimmage on Saturday, which only sharpened the contrast: there was a chance then to get bodies on the floor together, and now that chance is already thinner than it should be.
More minutes, fewer answers
So what does Monday night actually tell us? Not much about the headline stars, because they are not there. It does, however, tell us plenty about the scale of the early adjustment the Sixers are facing. With Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid out, and with six players unavailable in total, the burden shifts quickly to the rest of the group to look organized, connected and even vaguely ready for the grind ahead.
That is where the preseason value sits anyway. Not in the scoreline, and not in pretending every game must be taken at full throttle. It is about learning who fits where, who can steady the second unit, and who can handle extra run without the whole thing looking disjointed. If the Sixers are going to lean into all these new pieces, they need nights like this to mean something.
The timing is awkward because the Knicks arrive with a very different kind of momentum, coming off a dominant run to their first championship since 1973. That only heightens the contrast. One side is trying to keep a successful machine humming; the other is trying to put together a roster with a lot of moving parts and not enough shared minutes yet.
There is no need to overstate the danger. It is preseason, after all, and the long season is exactly why teams manage workloads carefully. But there is also no need to pretend this is ideal. When six players are out before the opener, including Maxey and Embiid, the Sixers are not really building chemistry so much as working around its absence.
That is the early reality. The open question is not whether the Sixers have talent. It is whether they can get enough of their talent on the floor together soon enough to make the new look matter.
