The 76ers have the worst record in the NBA and the usual level of drama, but Philadelphia is focused on the big picture with the Big Three.

LOS ANGELES — It’s hard to imagine a more strange—some might say “cursed”—beginning of what was supposed to be a celebratory start to the Philadelphia 76ers’ successful, high-stakes offseason.

A fact that continued Wednesday when the Sixers lost 110-98 to the Clippers in a game that saw Tyrese Maxey leave early with hamstring soreness.

It shouldn’t have been this way.

Even before this slow season began, the Sixers somehow turned the Clippers’ mismanagement of Paul George’s contract situation into the star’s arrival in Philadelphia. Joel Embiid, who played in the Olympics for Team USA and is presumably ready for the NBA regular season, would be paired with George and Maxey.

Those three stars, enough to put you near the top of Eastern Conference projections, will be joined by 10 more new players the Sixers brought in when president of basketball operations Daryl Morey bet he could earn enough of a roster spot and almost from scratch, aces appeared in the best, completely new team.

Hell, even Tobias Harris left. The future seemed guaranteed.

And then, as Philly fans – long-suffering, well-intentioned, traumatized by failure and very close calls – will tell you: Boom. Back to reality.

Embiid announced he most likely won’t play in a roweven though his debut was delayed due to chronic injuries that blighted his otherwise wonderful career. There was a frenzy in the media. PG also pushed back his start in Philadelphia due to a preseason injury. That Clippers game Wednesday night—returning to the spot he just left—was only his second of the season.

Among all this, of course, Embiid pushes Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Marcus Hayes Last week because of an article that was painfully personal – one that mentioned Embiid’s late brother and his son, who is named after him. On Tuesday, three game suspension What followed was the latest unrelenting drama for the team, which fell to 1-6 last night, tied for last in the Eastern Conference with the 1-6 Milwaukee Bucks (and last in the NBA, as the Jazz are also 1-6). . 6).

This mixture of injuries, incidents and foul play seemed to have the season on the rocks, again, just a few games into the season.

But this Sixers team—even with the push, the injuries, the NBA investigations and a brutal start to the season—is not in dire danger. So slow down this disaster prediction. There’s still plenty of time for Philadelphia to get better, and plenty of reason to remember their case, even if it’s very different from, say, Milwaukee’s.

This is not Bucks situationin which the sample size between Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo is large enough to believe that something could be inherently wrong. This year got off to a rocky start for Milwaukee, and wrong head coachcould indeed be a recipe for a possible divorce from Giannis in the future.

The situation in Philadelphia is markedly different.

The Sixers have the right head coach in Nick Nurse. They have yet to see the Embiid-PG-Maxey trio in action. Embiid hasn’t even played yet this season. Even when he does, it will be a while before he starts playing with PG and his new teammates. But chances remain that it will actually work.

The team seems to know this. On Wednesday, before the loss but with a then-1-5 record, there was a sense of calm in the locker room, among the head coach and among the team officials who headed west. They’re confident in their roster and hopeful that when it finally comes together – when Embiid returns next week, unless Maxey’s injury is serious and PG shakes off the rust like he did Wednesday – that this brand new team will play together , and good things will follow.

It’s also worth noting that George chose Philadelphia in a way that Lillard never chose Milwaukee. He wants be here. Dysfunction does not hide in the shadows.

No, the real key for Philly is Embiid’s health and the organization’s ability to find a trade-off between his health at the end of the season and him playing enough toward the point where his team will be good enough once he gets there for it to matter .

Philadelphia appears to be resorting to the advice Nurse said he gave Tyrese Maxey earlier this young season during a brief shooting slump: “Keep shooting, no matter what happens.”

The same logic applies to the team as a whole: just keep shooting.

There will be drama, and that is a fact that the Philadelphia organization knows and accepts. There will be losses like on Wednesday night. Embiid will miss games this year—lots of them. The plan is for doctors to monitor him regularly, focusing on making sure he can play in May and June, even if that means missing a lot of games in November, December and January. They will be overly cautious, even as the media, the league and perhaps even the fans become increasingly irritated and critical.

George, too, will likely miss enough games to make headlines and draw the ire of league officials still hell-bent on getting players to play more while precluding eligibility for awards after the second year of the league’s minimum threshold. They don’t care. They have a plan – a gamble, as we saw this summer, orchestrated by an organization willing to take risks to get where they want to go.

Even Embiid’s saga with Hayes seems like a fleeting moment, at least for the team. Nurse summed it up before the Clippers game on Wednesday night when, when asked about his reaction, he said he was glad it was over.

“I’m glad it’s done,” he said. “Now we have a schedule for when we will see him on the court.”

And it is the timing that matters. Not Wednesday’s game, not today’s record, not even the record before Embiid returns next Tuesday.

The Sixers had planned from the start to risk sitting out games for their two stars in exchange, five months later, for a chance to get what they haven’t had in a long, long time: a healthy enough Embiid and a good enough team. to finally make the real run.