It's still experiment time for the Sixers, even 54 games into the season

CAMDEN – The physical part of the season took a little time off, as most of the Sixers were away from the court during the All-Star break. But the mental aspect of the game was exhausted plenty, particularly by coach Nick Nurse and his staff before the team reconvened for practice Wednesday at their facility. At 30-24, with a somewhat revamped roster and the bad smell of an injury still hanging in the air, Nurse has plenty to juggle as he readies his club for the final 28 games of the season.

The team welcomed guard Cam Payne back, as he signed a contract for the rest of the season and will certainly be counted on to bolster the backcourt. Joel Embiid "was out there a little bit" during the practice, Nurse said, and was scheduled to meet with doctors about his knee, which caused him to miss the final two games before the break. Add that to Paul George, who won't be returning until the end of March as he completes his 25-game suspension for an anti-drug violation.

"We've got 28 left, I think it's a balance of a couple of things," said Nurse of his thoughts during the time away. "I think 28 is a little too far away to start getting too crazy about how you're playing and stuff going into the playoffs. That's a long stretch of games. For me, I'm still just looking for combinations of things. This is who we are now. I think there's a little bit of movement here in the last couple of weeks. Now we know who we are. My next eight to 10 games, I really want to get that ironed out. How do we look, who's backing up who, what combinations are out there. Get a little bit more smooth sailing on that stuff for the next few games and then we'll start worrying about some other things.

"We took a pretty deep dive into things we think we need to do better. Transition defense has got to be better. Defensive rebounding has got to be better. I think we're giving up too many uncontested threes. Things like that. Coaches, we worked on that today in the practices and the film going forward. We've got to raise our level on some of that stuff. But for now, we just kind of want to get the group, and get the rotations, and get the feel of who's playing with who and all of that stuff here in the next eight or 10 games."

A big part of that will be the health of Embiid. Nurse can shuffle the lineups all he wants, as to what backups play best with what starters and all, but does it really matter when Embiid isn't available? Perhaps, but it certainly makes for a more difficult task. And the fact that the coach wasn't able to say his center is now practicing fully has to raise some concerns, as one of the areas Nurse needs to decide on is his backup center. Is it the young Adem Bona, whose energy level is through the roof but costs the team with his lack of mental awareness at times, or is it Andre Drummond, who can rebound with the best of them but isn't as mobile defensively as Nurse would like in a three-point happy league? And what about the absence of George?

"I just feel like we make a play, make this, we rotate, we come out, and there's a pass and we cover that, and then there's another pass and we've got to make the next move," Nurse said. "Like, somebody's got to go. I would have said to start the year, it was one of our biggest strengths. We were just flying around, making that extra effort to make sure that every shot was challenged. That has dropped off a bit. That, I think, relates exactly to defensive rebounding. You have to make one more, maybe one more effort to block the guy off instead of them having a great possession and they miss. It's almost like we've got two, two and a half, three areas where we have to catch our breath, and it's not time to yet. We're trying to show them that. We're trying to extend our drills past the possession. I think they're all related to just making sure we're finishing, or maybe even one step beyond finishing, possessions."

You would hope that these questions would have been solved a bit more after 54 games. But it is the norm for the Sixers for so many of their recent seasons, and it mostly has to do with the health of their former MVP in Embiid.

"This is the time where playoff teams go out there and they take advantage of who they're playing against," said Tyrese Maxey. "If it's a team that's in the bottom of the standings, then they go out there and handle their business professionally. When you play a playoff team, the game is intense, the game is important and you've got to lock in and you got to show that if you see that team later on, what you have. It's time to buckle down. It's time to go out and increase our seed, and increase the way that we're playing, and figure it out and get ready for this postseason run."

It will begin Thursday when the Sixers host the Atlanta Hawks. The experimenting will continue, the health will be a concern and the rotations will be toyed with. But that's all part of it when you're the Sixers.

"I know it's important, but I've never been through it, so it's going to be an experience," said rookie VJ Edgecombe. "All games are important. All 82, because I feel like if we had a bad start, that would have been very concerning. Now that we have 28 games left, we have to play extremely hard, which we were going to do regardless. We are trying to make a playoff push. We know everyone is going to be playing extra hard because everyone is trying to make the playoffs. We're trying to get there, and hopefully everything goes as planned and we make it. It's super important."