Sixers Come Out Of All-star Break With A Chance To Right The Ship

The second month of the calendar year started with a couple of convincing wins over the Clippers and Warriors for the Sixers in the midst of a West Coast swing. Since that Warriors win on Feb. 3, Philadelphia has won one game. It got blown out by Portland and New York in its final two games before the All-Star break and the team’s trade deadline certainly left fans scratching their heads to say the least.

However, as the team prepares to resume its season, there’s reason to believe it can start racking up some wins again. Three of the Sixers’ first four games out of the break are against sub-.500 teams with Atlanta, New Orleans and Indiana on the horizon. The first week of March also features a home game against Utah and another Atlanta game as well. While the last couple of weeks have been rough, it’s important to keep things in perspective as Philly prepares to resume the season with a record of 30-24.

The Sixers’ preseason win total was 42.5 at most sportsbooks entering 2025-26. Barring a cataclysmic final two months of the regular season, they’re going to go over that number. Should they finish in the neighborhood of 44-46 wins, that would likely be enough to avoid the play-in tournament as one of the top six seeds in the Eastern Conference. Who in their right mind would complain about that?

Perhaps the last couple weeks have given Sixers fans a sobering reality check that it’s the same old Sixers team that’s going to disappoint you the moment you allow yourself to get sucked back into believing they could make a deep playoff run. Frankly, for as much as the franchise has been made fun of for its countless exits in the second round of the playoffs within the last decade, just making it to the second round this spring would be an overachievement.

Whether you cared or not about the All-Star weekend festivities, the Rising Stars challenge was another nice moment in the spotlight for VJ Edgecombe who continues to look like one of the NBA’s best rookies in 2025-26. Games like Atlanta, New Orleans and Indiana offer Edgecombe and the rest of Philly’s younger players who have been seeing a lot of minutes a chance to prove they belong in the NBA. In Edgecombe’s case, these upcoming games are a chance for him to show he can thrive in the NBA.

If you check the secondary market prices for these games, you’ll notice they aren’t expensive, and why would they be? The Sixers are a slightly better than average team in the East with an exhausted fanbase that has largely tuned them out and these upcoming opponents are certainly not generating any buzz. But racking up wins against some of the NBA’s bottom feeders should at least rebuild the team’s confidence after getting whitewashed by Portland and New York prior to the All-Star break.

A lot of this probably sounds like patting a high school team on the back for beating a team that barely has enough players to even play the game should the Sixers start the second half hot. But this is the lens that we must continue to view 2025-26 through. Philadelphia is never going to be considered one of the NBA’s upper echelon title contenders. But it should still be good enough to dispose of the majority of the lottery teams on its schedule. Expectations go away by the time the playoffs come around this spring because they never were that high to begin with for this season. That’s actually kind of refreshing, and so yes, it’ll be nice to see the Sixers pick up a few wins out of the break, regardless of who the opponent is.