76ers' Biggest Matchups for 1st Month of 2021-22 NBA Season

The Philadelphia 76ers have less than two weeks to prepare for the 2021-22 NBA season.

No, they haven't resolved the Ben Simmons situation.

Their disgruntled point guard wants a ticket out of town badly enough that he skipped their preseason opener. His absence was immediately greeted with a "roughly $360,000" fine, per Kyle Neubeck of Philly Voice.

An already ugly situation between Simmons and the Sixers is becoming grotesque.

Still, there's a season to prepare for and a championship to chase. Philadelphia may not know which players will be along for the ride, but it does know where its 2021-22 campaign will travel.

Since we all have access to the itinerary, we have spotlighted the three most compelling matchups the Sixers will draw in the opening month.

None of Brooklyn's Big Three—Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving—played 55 games last season. Durant and Harden didn't even make it through 40.

Yet the Nets finished with the second-best record in the East. Turns out that when you have three of the top offensive weapons on the planet, you can get by without one (or, at times, even two).

But the Nets only found their way past the Sixers once in three matchups, and that game occurred before the Harden trade and without Durant or Irving. Go figure. Durant missed all three contests, while Harden and Irving only faced the Nets once each (not in the same game).

That's a long-winded way of saying the Sixers haven't seen the Nets at anywhere near their best. If that changes for this contest—Irving's status is unclear—this will be a great test for the presumably Simmons-less Sixers to see where they are at in relation to the NBA's on-paper powerhouse.

If someone writes the story of the post-Process Sixers and ends it with the Simmons trade, Philly's second-round loss to Atlanta will be remembered as the series that permanently damaged the franchise's foundation.

That's when Simmons disappeared from the offense, passed up a wide-open dunk, was widely criticized from his play (including by Embiid and coach Doc Rivers) and seemingly decided he was done with the team. The series ended in late June; Simmons' trade demand surfaced in August.

If the Sixers win that series—which went all seven games and saw Philly suffer each of its four losses by a maximum of seven points—are there even whispers about a Simmons' trade? There's a chance that instead of sifting through trade offers, Philly is instead busy preparing a ring ceremony for its home opener.

But that what-if question will never be answered, in part because the Sixers couldn't keep Trae Young off the scoreboard in that series. He might have struggled with his shooting rates (39.2 percent from the field, 32.3 percent outside), but he still averaged 29.0 points and 10.9 assists for the series.

If the players aren't thinking about revenge in this game, the often raucuous Philly fans sure will be.

The 2020-21 season feels both as if it just wrapped up and like it was years ago.

On one hand, you can still catch a whiff of champagne if you are anywhere near Milwaukee. On the other, you may have forgotten—especially if you are not a Sixers fan—that it was Philadelphia, not Milwaukee or Brooklyn, that paced the Eastern Conference in wins last season.

The seeding, of course, didn't matter, as the Sixers lost in the second round for the third time in four seasons while the third-seeded Bucks captured their second title. But Philly nevertheless secured the top rung in the conference despite being swept in its three-game season series with Milwaukee.

The Sixers can't afford to give up that much ground. Their margin for error is gone for as long as the Simmons' situation goes unresolved, and they will need to master a tightrope walk to remain among the conference elite. Fending off Giannis Antetokounmpo and Co. would be a big step in the right direction.