On Monday evening, the Philadelphia 76ers sunk further below the Eastern Conference playoff line with a brutal home loss against the Chicago Bulls. Joel Embiid missed this contest with the same knee ailment that’s been bothering him all season, and neither Paul George nor Tyrese Maxey were able to do nearly enough to offset a hot-shooting night by Chicago.
It’s been a rough season for the 76ers, who are now in grave danger of missing out on the playoffs for the first time since 2017 with time running out on the 2024-25 campaign.
Stuck in the middle of all of the injury devastation and general turmoil is head coach Nick Nurse. Recently, Stephen A. Smith of ESPN took to First Take to express his sympathy for Nurse, and apparently diverge from his famously hard stance on certain recreational substances.
“I’m getting concerned about Nick Nurse. You have heard me say ‘stay off the weeeeed!’” said Smith, per Awful Announcing on X. “I’m encouraging him to get on some based on everything that I’ve heard weed does… damn it, go ahead and use it… let him drink, let him smoke some weed… you can’t be more depressed than this man is.”
A disastrous season for the 76ers
It would indeed be understandable for Nick Nurse to want to relieve some stress as he and the 76ers undergo what has been a trainwreck of a 2025-26 season. Philadelphia stumbled out of the gates, and eventually, it became clear that the turnaround many fans were expecting was never going to occur–or at least, hasn’t to this point.
Tyrese Maxey continues to put up monster stats on a nightly basis, but the constant Embiid injury concerns, as well as the Paul George signing which is looking more and more disastrous by the day have both put a hard limit on just how far the 76ers can go.
Things don’t get any easier for the 76ers from here, as they will next hit the road to take on the New York Knicks on Wednesday evening. At least Philadelphia fans have their Eagles.
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