76ers to retain Nick Nurse, Daryl Morey ahead of 2025-26 season

76ers to retain Nick Nurse, Daryl Morey ahead of 2025-26 season

Experiencing their worst season since 2015-16 under Sam Hinkie’s guidance, the Philadelphia 76ers are expected to bring back head coach Nick Nurse and general manager Daryl Morey, they announced after their 122-102 loss Sunday to the Chicago Bulls in their season finale.

“Obviously a tough season … not where we expected to be,” Morey said Sunday, according to ESPN’s Tim Bontemps. “We expect more. We really feel for the fans who put their heart and soul into this team, and we know we’ve let you down.

“Ownership gave us the resources to make aggressive moves this offseason to put a championship roster around Joel [Embiid] and Tyrese [Maxey] and sometimes those aggressive moves don’t initially work out, but we feel good about [them].”

The season was never good from the start. Well, despite losing seven of their first eight and 12 of their first 14, you could argue it wasn’t good before it even began.

Joel Embiid, who won Gold with Team USA last summer, did not play in the preseason or at the start of the regular season due to an ailing knee injury. That came amid serious questions about the health surrounding newly-acquired Paul George, who suffered a bone bruise after hyperextending his knee during preseason.

Embiid was shut down for the season in early March and underwent arthroscopic knee surgery last week; George was shut down for the season in mid-March after receiving injections in his adductor muscle. Embiid only played 19 games to George’s 41–going 7-11 in the 18 games played together with a minus-5.7 NET in the 411 minutes shared together.

To only make matters worse, both players will be on the books for $410.5 million combined–yes, four hundred and nineteen million–through the 2028-29 season, according to Spotrac. Both players have a bad track record of lower body injuries and that doesn’t appear to be getting better. What could go wrong?!?

Chauncey Billups agrees to a multi-year extension with Trail Blazers

Nurse isn’t a bad coach, but keeping both in-house is prolonging the inevitable. They will (likely) have a top-5 pick in this year’s draft, but they’re still probably not going anywhere as long as this core is together because there are so many additional questions outside of George and Embiid–sans Tyrese Maxey. Am I being too irrational? Let us know in the comments!

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