76ers break crazy starting lineups record
04/01/2025 07:02 PM
The Philadelphia 76ers’ 2024-25 season will go down in history — but not for the reasons they hoped for. This season’s Sixers squad set the NBA record for the most unique starting lineups in a single season with 52. Their starting lineup for Tuesday’s game against the New York Knicks will mark their 14th consecutive game with a different starting five from the last game.
The 76ers took the record from the Memphis Grizzlies of last season. Both playoff hopefuls were gashed by injuries to stars, role players and players on the fringes of the roster alike. Memphis had more overall players — an NBA record of 33 — but Philadelphia claims the record for the most starting fives.
Joel Embiid’s ongoing injury saga set the stage for this brutal season that saw Paul George, Jared McCain and Eric Gordon deal with injuries before suffering season-enders and role players like Tyrese Maxey, Kelly Oubre Jr., Andre Drummond, Caleb Martin, Kyle Lowry and KJ Martin struck with a specific issue that kept them out for weeks at a time. The injuries hardly stopped there, leading to multiple signings using the hardship exception, which grants teams opportunities to sign extra 10-day deals.
Only the Dallas Mavericks, New Orleans Pelicans and Utah Jazz have eclipsed 40 different starting fives this season. Only seven other teams have reached 30. The Sixers have had more starting lineups than the Knicks, Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons combined. They have more than double that of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
76ers set NBA record with 52 unique starting lineups in a season
Digging further into the specifics of the 76ers’ starting lineups throughout the season reveals just how wild and unsuccessful their season was.
For starters — pun intended! — the Sixers have had 21 of their 28 players from this season start at least once. Only five starting lineups earned multiple wins and none of them played as much as five games together.
The two most common starting lineups tied for a whopping four starts. Maxey and Oubre were a part of both. The first group, rounded out by George, Gordon and Guerschon Yabusele, went 2-2. The other, which included Caleb Martin, Lowry and Drummond, went 1-3.
The 76ers’ most successful starting lineup was the quintet of Embiid, Maxey, George, Oubre and Caleb Martin. That group went 3-0, posting the most wins without a loss. However, the group of Embiid, Maxey, George, Oubre and Justin Edwards went 0-3, marking the most games without a win.
Save for Lester Quinones, one of their original two-way signings, everyone who started this season with the Sixers started at least one game. Even Chuma Okeke and Oshae Brissett, who only played on 10-day contracts, got multiple starts. Oubre, at 57 starts, and Maxey, at 52, are the only Sixers to start over half of their games this season. Yabusele, currently at 41, will likely join them soon but no one else will. George ended up right at the halfway point with 41.
Coming into the season, the 76ers could have been reasonably expected to have more starting lineups than the average team. They planned to be extra cautious with Embiid and George, opting to rest them here and there to manage their workloads. In the end, injuries threw cold water all over the Sixers’ plans for their Big 3, which played just 15 games together in its first season and won seven of those games.
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