March 20, 2025
Bill Streicher/Imagn Images
Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons anchored some wildly successful lineups together.
Over the last week or so, we have been recalling the best and worst lineups in the recent histories of the Phillies, Sixers, Eagles and Flyers. There were a whole lot of options to choose from for the worst Sixers lineup, but I eventually landed on one. Now, it is time to flip the script. In a season in which the vast majority of my stories have been about losses and injuries, let's rewind to a more exciting time.
The best Sixers lineup of the last 10 years is...
I sincerely hope it does not get lost in time just how dominant this lineup became. Even with rookie No. 1 overall pick Markelle Fultz having a lost season, the 2017-18 Sixers took the league by storm. Expectations were high, but emerging superstar Joel Embiid and Rookie of the Year Ben Simmons led the Sixers as those goals were shattered. The Sixers won 52 games, ending the season on a 16-game winning streak spearheaded by Simmons and earning the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference to snap a playoff drought.
This unit was the best in the entire NBA in 2017-18, posting absurd numbers on both ends of the floor:
| Category | Stat | Rank out of 29 lineups with at least 300 minutes |
| Offensive Rating | 115.4 | 4th |
| Defensive Rating | 94.9 | 1st |
| Net Rating | 20.5 | 1st |
Embiid and Simmons were absolutely special, but the supporting pieces around them in this season were outstanding as well. Redick's all-time great movement shooting enabled him to develop a lethal two-man game with Embiid that became the team's bread and butter offensively while making things much easier for everyone else. Šarić had a career-best three-point shooting season in his sophomore campaign, shooting 39.3 percent from beyond the arc on considerable volume. Šarić had only made 31.1 percent of his three-point attempts as a rookie, returned to Philadelphia determined to make a leap as a floor-spacer, and did just that.
And then there was Covington, who was vilified by some in the fan base while very possibly being the most important player on the team aside from Embiid and Simmons. Covington shot a good percentage from three-point range on enormous volume, stayed out of the way as a spacer to allow Embiid and Simmons to operate at their best offensively, and blossomed into one of the single most impactful defensive players in the NBA.
Covington was named to the NBA's All-Defensive First Team in 2017-18, and the Sixers' absolutely unbelievable defensive efficiency is even more impressive when considering Redick and Šarić were both weak links on that end of the floor.
For the statistical production, the excitement it generated in the moment and memories it created, the 2017-18 Sixers' starting five is the best lineup in the last decade of the organization's history.
In all honesty, there was only one honorable mention here, only one five-man unit with a caliber of production that came close to the lineup above. It came in a (famously) much smaller sample size, but the results were terrific. A quick ode to the Sixers' starting lineup at the end of the following season:
Encouraged by their stunning success the year prior, the Sixers began pushing the chips in with two major trades during the 2018-19 season. Early in the season, Covington and Šarić were traded for Butler, whose off-the-dribble scoring and ball-handling would help offset Simmons' weaknesses in those areas (which were taken advantage of in the playoffs in 2018). Then, promising rookie Landry Shamet and a collection of draft picks and veterans netted the Sixers Harris, who was in the midst of a career-best season.
As everyone recalls, this lineup posted marvelous numbers in a very small sample size as head coach Brett Brown and the players themselves tried to figure out on the fly how to optimize the on-court fit:
| Category | Stat | Rank out of 64 lineups with at least 150 minutes |
| Offensive Rating | 121.9 | 5th |
| Defensive Rating | 102.5 | 8th |
| Net Rating | 19.4 | 3rd |
They went toe-to-toe with the eventual NBA champion Toronto Raptors, and there was plenty of enthusiasm, even after Kawhi Leonard's devastating Game 7 buzzer-beating game-winner, that the Sixers had the opportunity to build a special core around these five players. Redick, Butler and Harris were all set to become free agents, however, and as the story now famously goes, only Harris returned.
The Sixers sign-and-traded Butler to the Miami Heat in exchange for Josh Richardson, then let Redick walk in free agency. Those maneuvers cleared the necessary cap space for the Sixers to bring in one of Embiid and Simmons' rivals, Celtics center Al Horford, on a four-year deal worth over $100 million.
You might have heard this recently, but in order to shed Horford's contract after one disastrous season, the Sixers traded a top-six protected 2025 first-round pick. Surely that pick will never have any significance, right?
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