Sixers' Recent Losses Could Prove Costly in Multiple Ways

After getting blown out at home on Wednesday by the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Sixers had a chance to avenge that loss Friday. They jumped out to an early lead and maintained it for most of the game, but they tightened up late and got outscored 13-4 in the final three-and-a-half minutes of what wound up being a 117-115 loss.

That was the Sixers' third loss in their past four games, which slid them below Cleveland in the Eastern Conference standings. They're now seventh in the East, a half-game behind both the Cavaliers and Orlando Magic.

The good news is that they're only two games behind the third-seeded New York Knicks, whom they've already beaten twice. If the Sixers win either of their two remaining matchups against the Knicks, they'll secure the season series and earn the playoff-seeding tiebreaker if they end the year with identical records. The bad news is that the Cavs have already beaten them three times, so they've secured the tiebreaker over the Sixers.

The Sixers are still four games ahead of the 10th-seeded Atlanta Hawks and 5.5 games ahead of the 11th-seeded Milwaukee Bucks, so they aren't in danger of tailspinning their way out of the postseason conversation entirely yet. However, if they don't finish with a top-six seed, they'll be relegated to the play-in tournament, where they'd have only one or two games to secure a playoff berth.

Not only could these recent losses wind up haunting them in April, but they could influence which direction they go at the NBA trade deadline.

Will the Sixers be buyers or sellers? TBD

With two-and-a-half weeks to go until the Feb. 5 trade deadline, it's still not clear whether the Sixers will be buyers or sellers.

Their hands are somewhat tied by their top-heavy salary structure, which limits their ability to trade for someone in the $25 million range unless they move off Paul George and/or Joel Embiid. If anything, they figure to make a smaller move on the margins, although they do have more than $20 million in expiring contracts between Quentin Grimes, Kelly Oubre Jr. and Andre Drummond.

Had the Sixers swept the fourth-seeded Raptors in Toronto last weekend or held serve against the Cavaliers at home, that might have given the Sixers' front office and/or ownership group more confidence in this team being worth further investments. The East is far more wide open than usual this year, and the Sixers have some dark-horse potential as long as their Big Three (Big Four?) stays healthy. But if they mostly feast on bottom-feeders—only nine of their 22 wins have come against teams that are currently above .500—they might be more paper tigers than a legitimate championship hopeful.

The good news is that the Sixers will have a few more opportunities to prove their mettle between now and the trade deadline. They face the Phoenix Suns on the second night of a back-to-back Tuesday and have home dates against the Houston Rockets on Thursday and Knicks on Saturday. After that, they have four straight games against teams well under .500 before heading out on a five-game road trip out west.

If the Sixers can keep Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and/or Jalen Brunson in check and win a few of those games, the key decision-makers might decide to get more aggressive with its pursuit of upgrade opportunities. But if they continue to stumble against fellow above-.500 teams, ownership might instead decide to pursue its now-annual salary dump to get under the luxury-tax threshold rather than invest more resources in this year's group.

The scope of what they do at the trade deadline may depend on how these next two weeks shake out, both for the Sixers and the league at large. That gives every game more importance between now and Feb. 5.

Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM.

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