Charles Barkley says The Process will lead to the playoffs, but there’s a caveat: The team has to stay healthy. Barkley spoke with CSN Philly about the Sixers’ chances at a return to the postseason and sounded pretty optimistic.
With a young, talented roster that now includes the likes of Markelle Fultz, there’s reason to be excited about what Philadelphia can do. But Barkley says they do have to buck the recent trend of, well, never actually playing any games. That starts with long, productive seasons from Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons.
“If Embiid is healthy and Simmons is healthy, I think they’re definitely gonna make the playoffs,” Barkley said. “Obviously the injury thing has really hurt them the last couple years. But if those two guys are healthy, I think both of them are terrific players. Now you’ve got Fultz, you’ve got JJ (Redick). They’ve done some good things with the guys coming off the bench. (Dario) Saric was fantastic last year.
If they don’t make the playoffs, I’d be totally shocked.”
Those are a lot of caveats, but it’s an encouraging sign that the perception of the team has changed around the league
“The Sixers, man, they’ve just got a really bright future,” Barkley said later, noting that Simmons and Fultz will have to learn to play together. That’s easier said than done, of course, but just having that kind of talent on the roster is definitely a great alternative to the last half decade of Sixers basketball.
It seems inevitable that the playoffs will happen for this group in Philadelphia, it’s just a matter of if the team can keep all that talent on the court at the same time.
