As the days tick down ahead of the NBA trade deadline, the Sixers’ roster is packed with questionable players.
Going into a Tuesday night matchup vs. the Mavs, the team listed five players as questionable on its injury report:
- Joel Embiid (left knee injury management)
- Andre Drummond (left toe injury recovery)
- Caleb Martin (right hip sprain)
- KJ Martin (left foot stress reaction)
- Eric Gordon (left knee soreness)
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On the Dallas side, Anthony Davis and Max Christie were officially questionable with a “trade pending” designation.
Paul George will remain out against the Mavs with a left pinkie finger injury. Jared McCain has been ruled out for the season after undergoing left lateral meniscus surgery.
Sixers head coach Nick Nurse said that everyone practiced Monday besides McCain. Even after squandering a 26-point lead Sunday night to the Celtics, he’s pleased with how his team has competed while deeply shorthanded.
“I think these guys are playing awesome,” Nurse said. “I think the spirit, the effort, the belief that they have is amazing.”
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The 19-29 Sixers used an eight-man rotation in the Boston game. Tyrese Maxey, Kelly Oubre Jr. and rookie Justin Edwards all exceeded 40 minutes.
“That was my first time playing 44 minutes, so I came in early, did a lot of treatment,” Edwards said. “I was joking around like, ‘I’m going to go dunk my whole body in the ice bath,’ but I really might go do that.”
We’ll see how exactly the Sixers look after the deadline Thursday afternoon. For now, all healthy players are welcome. KJ Martin's been out since Dec. 23, Embiid since Jan. 4, Caleb Martin since Jan. 10. Drummond only made four appearances in January.
After dealing with right shoulder pain earlier in the season, Caleb Martin said it’s taken “a little bit longer than anticipated” to recover from his current injury.
“I think the difference is, with my shoulder, it was like, OK, I can still move. … So I could kind of deal with that, as much as I could. But it’s my groin. When it’s the lower half and you can’t move and aren’t capable of sliding your feet, you become more of a liability. Even if I wanted to go out there, knowing I would’ve been a liability, it just wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t happen.
“That’s part of me growing as a player, just realizing when it’s time to give yourself a second and try to get back on track. I haven’t done a great job of that in my career; I’ve typically played through a lot of stuff. It’s one of those things where I just couldn’t. I’m glad I’ve been doing the rehab and making progress each day. Hopefully, I’ll be making a return soon.”
For Nurse, the big-picture questions that accompany a major date like the deadline haven’t seemed especially relevant lately.
He’s had to focus on undermanned rotations, questionable players and nightly game plans.
“I think evaluating what’s happened and all that kind of stuff is very difficult,” he said. “I don’t think it matters much. We all sit around and say, ‘Oh my God, if we were just a little better at offensive rebounding’ or whatever, but it’s just so hard … to try to rank anything. We’ve had six of our top nine, 10 guys out for weeks. So it doesn’t matter. We’ve got to integrate what we can. We’ve got to keep polishing some things that we’re finding that fit this group.
“We’ve got to make sure that the guys re-integrating play hard, play with great effort. And if we do that, we should be able to get better. I think we’ve got some things to build. We certainly have lots of room for improvement, but we’ve got to make sure that the execution and the effort stays at a high level.”