Off-Day Notebook: All-Star Returns, Sixers' Impending Returns and Nuggets Loss Burns

With a bunch of small storylines popping up in Sixer world on Tuesday, here is a notebook of commentary on the day's happenings. From All-Star fan returns to injury reports and some of the persisting commentary from Monday's loss to the Nuggets, so much for rest on an off day.

Tyrese Maxey 3rd among East vote-getters in second fan return

Maxey's brilliant showing in Madison Square Garden over the weekend stamped a road trip that earned him Eastern Conference Player of the Week honors for games played between December 29 and January 4. But it was not enough to inspire fan voters to keep him in front of Jalen Brunson on the second return of All-Star voting.

After ranking third in East voting on the first return, Brunson now ranks second, leading Maxey by some 7,500 votes on the second count:

Luka Dončić and Giannis Antetokounmpo remain the leaders in their conferences in the second fan returns in NBA All-Star Voting 2026.

Fans (50% of the vote) join NBA players (25%) and a media panel (25%) in selecting five players in each conference honored as starters. pic.twitter.com/u8tlbj9GA8
— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) January 6, 2026

I think it will be quite hard for Maxey to keep up with Brunson, who has not been better than him or Cade Cunningham this season but has all of New York behind him and the global recognition that comes with being the face of the Knicks.

What is impressive is that Maxey has amassed tens of thousands of more votes than Stephen Curry has out west, and the Warriors legend has global popularity that makes him a near lock to be an All-Star starter every year.

The power of being an international star in this league is immense. It feels quite momentous that Brunson has New York and the global recognition of the Knicks at his back, yet he's not close in vote count to the likes of Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Luka Doncic.

Of course, Doncic plays for the second biggest market in basketball. He has fans all over the country who spend their Sunday afternoons cheering for the Dallas Cowboys and their Sunday evenings rooting on the Lakers. But he, Antetokounmpo and Jokkic have entire countries putting winds in their sails, too.

All-Stardom has lost its prestige over the years even if being selected remains an honor on a player's resume, but it must be an incredible feeling to represent an entire country by yourself on that stage.

Returns imminent for Kelly Oubre Jr., Trendon Watford

After Nick Nurse suggested that their returns were imminent ahead of Monday's loss to the Denver Nuggets, Kelly Oubre Jr. and Trendon Watford were listed as 'questionable' on the initial injury report for Wednesday's home game against the Washington Wizards.

Oubre, who suffered a sprained left knee early in a November 14 loss in Detroit, has missed almost exactly two months. Watford suffered a strained left adductor in the first half of a November 25 loss to the Orlando Magic and has missed exactly six weeks.

Joel Embiid is 'questionable' with left knee injury management and right ankle soreness, while MarJon Beauchamp and Johni Broome are listed as 'doubtful' due to G-League assignments.

The Wizards are 14th in the East and will be on the second night of a back-to-back. The first leg was competitive and both Khris Middleton and CJ McCollum played. The Sixers should win this game no matter what, but it wouldn't be surprising if Washington rested the aging, injury-prone Middleton and the ostensibly departing McCollum on Wednesday.

The Sixers could certainly convince themselves that this is a rare opportunity to give Embiid some rest without putting too much risk on coughing up a victory. But those were also the famous last words on Monday when the incredibly short-handed Nuggets walked into Philadelphia and beat the near full-strength Sixers.

My take — Embiid has had a lot of maintenance time this season. This is the time of the season you have to start paying that back, even if it means occasionally fighting through some fatigue or discomfort. Playing through it, when appropriate, is how you build your conditioning and tolerance for discomfort for the postseason, and this team will be in the postseason if things continue to trend the way they have this season. And if you have aspirations of doing something serious in the postseason, you should be thinking about making up bankable wins every time you cough one up, which is what the Sixers did on Monday. Every bad loss hurts in the standings. If Embiid feels OK, he should suit up and earn his rest after the Sixers have bludgeoned the Wizards.

I expect Oubre to slot right back into his starting spot, although Dominick Barlow has held the role well enough for there to be some conversation aboutwho deserves to be the fifth starter.

Barlow has certainly played well enough to earn NBA stability in the form of a standard contract, but I don't think it's much of a debate. Neither fosters much confidence in his perimeter shooting, although you'd certainly pick Oubre if you needed one to make a three to pay off your mortgage. But Oubre is far more confident in his shooting than Barlow is, and that makes him more of a threat to defenses. Barlow is a better rebounder, but Oubre is a more seasoned cutter. And you'd have to give Oubre's defensive chops in the time he's been a Sixer the credit they deserve, so perhaps the two are about equal on that end in their own ways.

It then comes down to a battle of who Nick Nurse trusts more, and that would be Oubre without question. Beyond the health of the most important players, I'm most concerned with building cohesion in the second half of the season. Oubre is the guy who will be on the floor down the stretch of playoff games, so Oubre is the one who needs to most gel with the four core starters.

Quentin Grimes on the false sense of security of playing a depleted team

The Sixers have only themselves to blame for losing to a team that did not have Jokic, Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, Cam Johnson, Christian Braun, Tim Hardaway Jr. or Jonas Valanciunas on Monday.

But lack of name recognition and contractual status have been conflated with this perceived lack of belonging on an NBA court. There is one advantage to being severely undermanned — the opponent can't really game plan specifically for you because there's not much footage with which to prepare.

Maxey alluded to that when talking to reporters after Monday's loss, remarking that he told his teammates that it would be a tough game without all of Denver's more featured players available.

Grimes, who started his career as a reserve deep on the Knicks' bench, knows what that opportunity is like.

"It's a great feeling because you know you're going to get a lot of shots. You're kind of playing free out there. It's a 'stay ready' game," Grimes told On SI of the approach reserves take in rare situations like the one the Nuggets were in on Monday.

"Those guys have probably been working all season behind Jokic and Aaron Gordon, all those other guys they've been watching. You can tell they got a good discipline within their system. They run their sets, get in their stuff pretty quickly. So you can tell those guys have been ready and they got the opportunity and they capitalized on it today."

The more I think about the way this game has been discussed, the more I think the reality is that consumers and teams fall into a trap when they don't recognize the names on the backs of the opposition's jerseys.

For one, the out-of-market NBA fan is probably redirecting their attention to a different game or another interest when a high-profile matchup loses its juice or the game devolves into a blowout. The average in-market NBA fan probably isn't all that focused on the minutiae of teams playing two time zones across the country when they have their own team to think about. So it's not surprising that most people couldn't identify anyone suiting up for the Nuggets on Monday. That does not mean, however, that those players are not capable in their own rights.

You'd probably argue that they'd play regularly or be on standard contracts if they were any good.

Somewhat fair. But a team that has a player of Jokic's caliber is always playing to win a championship. So they're probably built on expensive contracts. With expensive contracts comes equity. You don't want your big-money players sitting on the bench. And with expensive contracts comes experience, and coaches usually lean toward experience when the goal is to win every single night.

As for the other half of that reort, look across the NBA. There are success stories built on two-way contracts all over the league. The two-way contract, in the context of the highly-punitive CBA, is a secret weapon in team-building nowadays. Those contracts are how you get upside swings in the door.

So was it misguided to overlook the depleted Nuggets because of a lack of name recognition or contract size? Yeah, to some extent. Most players will tell you that no one in this league is bad at basketball.

But does that pardon the Sixers for not being able to capitalize on a team whose starting center was 6-foot-9? Absolutely not.