PHILADELPHIA — Upon the conclusion of a 24-58 season, 76ers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey Sunday declared everyone would have to look in the mirror and evaluate what went wrong. Just as unequivocally, he announced he’d be remaining in his job, as would head coach Nick Nurse. It was a low-key reveal of news perhaps not quite so matter of fact these days. For the first time since 2017, the Sixers are not in the NBA Playoffs. And considering that the teams sitting fourth and eighth in the Western Conference have fired their coaches in the last month, nothing would be off the table for a team mired in 13th in the East. Yet Morey praised Nurse for “maximizing” the developmental return in a disastrous season, one the Sixers entered with many sportsbooks’ third-best championship odds and ended with the NBA’s fifth-worst record. Before the season-ending 122-102 loss to Chicago, Nurse took a swing at self-evaluation, expressing a need for change within the caveats that no coach would’ve done much with the hand dealt to these Sixers. “I think each season when it ends, I try to do a really thorough reflection on what I learned, what I could have done a lot better, try to figure out some things we did like and that we did well, and keep and polish those,” Nurse said. “So I think that’s going to happen here shortly, obviously, take a good, strong, hard look at every single thing.” These Sixers built a roster around stars Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid and newly signed Paul George, then saw all three injured for large stretches. Embiid, his season ending early with knee surgery for a second straight year, played 19 games. George mustered 41, Maxey 52. Of a possible 246 games from their Big 3, Nurse and his staff got less than half. Only 15 times did the Big 3 start a game, going 8-7 and failing to finish a handful with each of the three avoiding ejection or injury. Add an almost entirely new roster with just four holdovers from Nurse’s first season in charge, an avalanche of injuries, 30 different players used and an NBA-record 54 unique starting lineups, and it would be hard to conclude what Nurse could’ve done better. Late in the season, losing behooved the 76ers, to increase the odds of retaining a top-six protected first-round pick. The feedback from within the locker room mainly followed that logic. “I give Coach Nurse a ton of credit for just picking up the pieces literally and trying to figure this thing out as we were going throughout the year,” George said. “But I think, there was just no consistency in terms of lineups, personnel and who was just on the floor in general.” “That’s a tough job,” Kelly Oubre Jr. added. “I couldn’t do it. I tip my hat to those who do that and are faced with that responsibility, but I think they handled it the best way that they possibly could. … (Nurse) being a presence, all the coaches always showing us love, helping us out through the tough times and staying that consistent rock for us, I think that was a great trait that they all have.” The biggest note of discord that leaked out of the locker room was a players meeting in November in Miami after a 2-11 start. That wasn’t necessarily Nurse’s doing, with players leading the discussion. But as a tone-setter, it remained a topic of conversation five months later. “We shouldn’t have been in that position,” veteran guard Eric Gordon said. “I feel like, especially that early in the year, to have a conversation as a team, we shouldn’t be in that kind of position. But we overcame it. We went through a lot – injuries, trying to figure out ways to get chemistry. … We even got to the point where we were trying to figure out ways to win.” Nurse, 57, endured the worst coaching season of his career. He was 27-45 in the pandemic-delayed 2020-21 season with the Raptors, though he was still riding the high of the 2019 NBA title he’d brought the city, with the COVID-19 pandemic challenges as a mitigating factor that hit the league’s Canadian club particularly hard. He was fired by the Raptors in 2023 after going 41-41. He has made the playoffs in four of seven seasons. Nurse was clear-eyed for most of the season about the challenges before him. He’s similarly approaching the post-mortem. “All of us sitting in this room can certainly point out all the problems, as a lot of people can,” he said. “The real truth comes into what are the solutions and what’s the road we’re going to get on to get them fixed?” ...read more read less