On Saturday night the six-game road trip resumes for the Sixers in Salt Lake City when they take on the Jazz. It’s not a traditional road trip that often sees teams stay in one region of the country as this one is bookended with games in Boston and Brooklyn with four Western Conference teams in between. Even the Western Conference opponents are a little spread out on the map with a trip to the mountain area of the country that doesn’t include Denver and Portland, Monday’s opponent, is perhaps the most remotely-located team in the league.
But enough with the geography lesson and on to the basketball. Winners of eight of 11, the Sixers have to be feeling good about themselves for the first time all season. However, they’re still 11-17 and certainly have not climbed all the way out of the early-season hole they dug for themselves. These upcoming games look to be ripe opportunities for the team to continue its march to .500. Utah and Portland have combined for just 17 wins in the season’s first two months while Sacramento is under .500 as well and just fired head coach Mike Brown.
For as bad as the first six weeks went for the Sixers in 2024-25, they did mostly take care of business against inferior competition, piling up four wins against Charlotte, a win in Chicago and disposing of the Nets the first time they met Brooklyn. Between the Jazz, Trail Blazers, Kings, Warriors and we’ll toss in the Nets as the final game on the trip, there’s really no reason the Sixers should go any less than 4-1 to close out the trip. That would get them to 15-18 on the season and even give them an outside shot to finish over .500 by the year’s 41-game halfway point.
Before anyone gets too far ahead of themselves, let’s remember the Sixers never make things easy. I’m sure the Warriors game will bring back brutal memories too as it was a game in San Francisco in January last season that saw Joel Embiid initially injure his meniscus that is still getting load managed today. When we continue to look at the schedule, it gets significantly harder after this road trip which further highlights the importance of stacking wins now.
A home tilt with Phoenix on Jan. 6 is the first game at Wells Fargo Center in 2025 for the Sixers. From Jan. 6 until a Feb. 5 home game against Miami, the Sixers will have 13 games against teams that made the playoffs last season. There are also five back-to-backs in that month of games as well. The trade deadline is Feb. 6.
A month of games against nearly exclusively playoff-caliber teams will provide clarity on just how good this Sixers team can be and it will line up just in time with deadline day. Including the four games from Jan. 6 to Feb. 5 against lottery teams from last season, it’s a total of 17 games the Sixers will play from the time they return home until the trade deadline. Considering the stiff competition, 9-8 would probably be pretty good in that 17-game stretch.
But that also puts a further emphasis on taking care of business for the remainder of this road trip. The Sixers are still six games under .500. If they’re not able inch closer to the break-even mark in the next week they’re likely to remain considerably below .500 by the deadline. At that point, the season will be 50 games old.
For what it’s worth, two of the teams in the Eastern Conference play-in tournament last year finished below .500. So sure, the Sixers could do just enough to qualify for the play-in tournament with a bad record. But that’s really the worst possible outcome for this season and it would basically guarantee the team would not make a deep playoff run and would not retain its top-six protected first-round pick.
Philadelphia must continue playing well and make a rise in the standings on this road trip. If that happens, and the Sixers can tread water and stay close to .500 leading up to the trade deadline, there’s enough time after the deadline to where finishing over .500 and avoiding the play-in tournament is still a realistic outcome. Good teams take care of business and avoid flat spots. That’s the next task for the Sixers after an impressive victory in Boston.
