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NBA Philadelphia 76ers guard VJ Edgecombe is one of the biggest reasons there is hope for the organization once again. Kyle Ross / Imagn Images PHILADELPHIA — Tanking, a scourge upon humankind, remains a sucker’s bet, a vessel for the weak-minded who won’t do the hard, tough but ultimately rewarding work of building a team through elbow grease and never, ever taking shortcuts. Until VJ Edgecombe falls in your lap because of … tanking. That changes everything! Advertisement Friday, the Philadelphia 76ers had a near-sellout crowd rooting for them, again, at Xfinity Mobile Arena, on Halloween night, against their hated rivals, the Boston Celtics. And, as they’ve done over and over so far this season, the Sixers came roaring back from a big deficit, rallying from 23 down in the first half to get within 1 in the final seconds, with a chance to win a game they had no business winning. But Joel Embiid’s 3-point shot at the buzzer hit the back rim, and Boston escaped with a 109-108 win, giving the 76ers their first loss of the season. Didn’t really matter. The same fans who booed and didn’t show up just a few months ago were back. And though we’re less than two weeks into the season, there is hope again here that had ebbed out of the organization. Edgecombe isn’t the only reason, but he’s one of the biggest ones. “Obviously, everything’s going to be better, just because you’re winning games, and last year was just a disaster, ” Embiid said. “Guys, me mainly, not being able to play, not being at my best, and a couple other guys missing games and missing most of the season. Obviously, you can’t get worse than that. Everything other than that is already a good feeling. ” Everybody got hurt last season, starting with Embiid, who missed the final two months of the season dealing with a balky knee that ultimately was scoped in April and played in only 19 games. The cascading wall of season-long maladies also swamped Paul George and Tyrese Maxey and Jared Mc Cain. Team president Daryl Morey said after last season’s finale — a 58th loss — that he and the organization had let Philadelphia fans down. Of course, much of that, ultimately, was by design. When it became clear it couldn’t overcome the injuries to Embiid and the core group, Philly, let’s say, pivoted to, uh, developing its young players. From the end of January, when the Sixers were a not-good-but-not-out-of-it-in-the-East 19-27, Philly went 5-31 the rest of the way. To keep its first-round pick from going to Oklahoma City, as part of the trade that sent Al Horford there in 2020, Philadelphia had to finish last season with a bottom-six record. Marcus Bagley, God bless him, played 43 minutes in the season finale, which was his 10th NBA game. Philly finished with the sixth-worst record in the league. Advertisement And yet, despite all that less-than-optimal competition down the stretch, Philly not only kept its first-rounder but also vaulted all the way up to the third pick. After the Dallas Mavericks (1. 5 percent odds of getting the top pick beforehand) took Cooper Flagg and the San Antonio Spurs (which got a top-four pick for the third straight year) took Rutgers guard Dylan Harper, Philadelphia went for Edgecombe, who had a massive defensive pedigree established after one season at Baylor and looked like he’d be a good complementary piece. But the 20-year-old Edgecombe has shown a maturity that has allowed for a quick transition to the pros. rese to VJ on repeat pic. twitter. com/xs Gpsw4ws9 — Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) November 1, 2025 “His willingness to be in the right spots at the right times, ” forward Kelly Oubre Jr. said. “His willingness to carry over the game plan from the coaches, and things like that. That’s very rare. It takes guys a while to get adjusted to the speed, get adjusted to terminology. He seems to have it. But he works hard. He watches a lot of film, loves the game. I think those are the great tools to create a great basketball player. ” Edgecombe is certainly taking on the defensive assignments most teams thought would be his specialty. He guarded Jaylen Brown on Friday, and Derrick White, and Payton Pritchard. But he’s also splashing 3s at a very high rate, certainly higher than many teams believed he’d be able to make coming out of Baylor, where his shot was iffy at best. After going 2 of 4 from deep Friday, when he played 40 minutes in his first back-to-back games, he’s shooting . 438 (14 of 32) behind the arc so far. The lightning quickness he and Maxey display in the backcourt together is going to be an absolute nightmare for opponents. Philly’s played small with Maxey and Edgecombe and Oubre and Quentin Grimes and been fine for long stretches. To be sure, the Sixers will need Embiid to be near his MVP level to have any real chance this season. But they now have a real future, with Maxey and Edgecombe and Grimes and Mc Cain (when he returns from a torn ligament in his right thumb) composing one of the best guard rotations in the East. Advertisement “V. J. ’s been really good, ” Maxey said. “He’s done a good job of just playing and being himself. That’s the biggest thing he’s done. For a rookie, he hasn’t wavered or hasn’t deferred, and we don’t want him to. We don’t want him deferring. We want him to go out there and be who he is. ” And again: The reason Edgecombe is here this season is because the Sixers didn’t want to win last season. The reason Embiid became one of the game’s best players is because Philadelphia showed absolutely no interest in competing for years — years — until The Process delivered Embiid to the Illadelph in 2014. The 76ers took Embiid that year with the … third pick. And, the reason Victor Wembanyama is dominating the world from San Antonio is … well, this was the Spurs’ lineup in their final regular-season game of the 2022-23 season, a season that ended at 22-60, two months before the franchise’s world changed: Julian Champagnie, Sandro Mamukelashvili, Keita Bates-Diop, Malaki Branham and Tre Jones. To be sure, despite years of mitigating the lottery odds, tanking remains a problem for the league. The betting scandal that enveloped the NBA last week involved a lot of teams that were either already tanking, or soon would be, and fringe players on those teams who could — allegedly — pull themselves out of games so their gambling friends could clean up on prop bets. When the team isn’t really invested in winning, it’s easy for players on those teams to manipulate stats. And yet, every year, multiple teams see no other way to get the difference-making talent that, more often than not, congregates up high in the draft. If they didn’t think that, if the numbers said “it doesn’t matter where you pick in the first round; you can get great players at 18 and 23 and 37, ” no one would tank. Why do you think NBA front offices that deal in probability all the time with analytics and such are suddenly stupid when they play the odds and maximize their chances of getting a shot at franchise-level talent by tanking? Teams tank because it still works. Or, at least, it works enough to make it worth their while to eject a lost season, or seasons, into the sun and wait to see what the next day brings. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle David Aldridge is a senior columnist for The Athletic. He has worked for nearly 30 years covering the NBA and other sports for Turner, ESPN, and the Washington Post. In 2016, he received the Curt Gowdy Media Award from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Legacy Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. He lives in Washington, D. C. Follow David on Twitter @davidaldridgedc