The 76ers lost their preseason finale to the Celtics on Friday night, 125-120, and the final score is the least interesting number from that game.
The interesting number is minutes. Nick Nurse played LeBron James and Joel Embiid to preseason highs, pushing his two most important pieces deeper into a game that carries zero standings weight, because what he's actually building isn't a win. It's a habit. "Still working on our rhythm," was the phrase that came out of Philadelphia's camp after the final buzzer, and that's the honest headline on this whole roster right now.
VJ Edgecombe did not play. He was held out Friday, and Nurse's choice to lean harder on his two stars in Edgecombe's absence is the kind of preseason tell that actually tells you something: when the newest, youngest piece of this puzzle is out, the staff goes straight back to the two names holding the whole thing together.
why james and embiid playing big minutes matters
Preseason minutes are usually meaningless. A coach wants reps, not outcomes, and most fourth quarters belong to the back of the roster auditioning for a spot. Nurse didn't play it that way here. He ran his stars deep into a game Philadelphia ultimately lost to Boston, which tells you the minutes were about building chemistry under real fatigue and real defensive pressure, not padding a highlight reel.
That chemistry question is the whole season for this team. Embiid's health and workload have been the organizing question around Philadelphia for years now, and dropping a 41-year-old James into the same frontcourt picture only sharpens it. Earlier in the preseason, in his home debut in a Sixers uniform, James threw down an alley-oop slam off a feed that showed an early "connection," as the building put it, with new backcourt partner Tyrese Maxey. That's the kind of moment that makes a crowd stand up. It is also exactly one possession, and one possession does not make a rotation.
What Friday's extended minutes actually measured was whether James, Embiid, and Maxey can hold a lineup together without Edgecombe spacing the floor around them. The jury on that is still out, by design. Preseason finales exist to answer exactly this kind of question before it costs anything.
what's next for philadelphia
The 76ers close out the preseason slate with that finale now in the books, and they turn the page to the regular season with a road trip to New York to face the Knicks on Tuesday, October 20. That's the first game that counts, and it's the first real look at whether the rhythm Nurse has been chasing all October travels to a building where the other team is trying just as hard to stop it.
Edgecombe's return timeline is the thing to watch between now and then. A healthy Edgecombe changes the shape of every lineup question this preseason finale raised. Without him, Philadelphia is leaning on two future Hall of Famers to generate the spacing a complementary piece is supposed to provide, and that's a lot to ask for 82 games, let alone one.