It is time to meet the 2026-27 Sixers.

After a long, dream offseason in which the Sixers acquired LeBron James and Jaylen Brown to play alongside Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe – and a (mostly) normal training camp and preseason – we have finally arrived at opening night. The Sixers start the season on the Madison Square Garden floor Tuesday night, moments after the New York Knicks raise a championship banner for the first time in more than 50 years.

Our first mailbag of the season is something of a megamailbag. Last week, I solicited any and all prompts for season-long predictions; most of them came in the form of creative questions and intriguing over/under exercises.

The first mailbag of the 2026-27 Sixers regular season dives into all sorts of questions that will be worth monitoring throughout one of the most anticipated campaigns in franchise history:

From @pjraduta: Joel Embiid field goal attempts per game: over/under 17.5?

Here are Embiid's shot attempts per game since the Sixers reoriented their offense in 2020-21:

Taking the under seems like the play here given the Sixers' significant offensive firepower, but I would only take it by a hair. More on this later, but I think the extent to which Embiid's scoring volume will decrease is being overstated.

Embiid, for whatever it is worth, is not projecting any concern over volume. On this star-studded roster, he argued earlier this month, efficiency needs to be the focus.

"I think when you put great players together, the standards you should have yourself should be – whether it's be more efficient, because obviously you might get less touches, but you might get also more space," Embiid said on Oct. 3. "So what are you going to do with that space?... Roles don’t even matter; it’s just about making the right play for each other over and over and over and try to find a way to be – I think for me – more efficient than I’ve ever been. I think this is an opportunity for [all] of us, to be more efficient than we’ve ever been in our lives, in our career, because with great players means teams might over-help, they might have to make some decisions, and yeah, you’re going to get more space to do what you need to do."

From @pjraduta: Will we see the all-Klutch lineup of Tyrese Maxey, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Justin Edwards, LeBron James and Jabari Walker play together?

This is a wonderful idea I am jealous I did not come up with. I am going to say yes, especially because this grouping makes complete sense positionally – especially now that Walker, with a terrific preseason in the wake of Ariel Hukporti's season ending injury, should now be firmly in the backup center mix.

“I love Jabari," Brown said after the Sixers' preseason opener on Oct. 5. "Jabari has been great. He’s been awesome. He’s been doing his job. He’s been hitting shots. He’s been rebounding defensively and offensively. He’s been doing what the coaches have asked him to do. So, he’s been great and he’s been doing really well since training camp.”

Ultimately, this unit is built like many of the ones Sixers head coach Nick Nurse should be expected to lean on throughout the season. At times he will only have two or three stars available – more on that in the next question – and even when all five of his stars are healthy, Nurse will stagger them to keep two or three ball-dominant players on the court at all times.

There is an argument to be made that Maxey and James should be split up because they are the Sixers' two best offensive initiators. But they make for such a synergistic duo that my lean would be to keep them paired up as often as possible.

MORE: Can Sixers' improved transition offense lead to defensive leap?

From @JasonKantorBTB: Assuming there will be many games where the Sixers are forced to play without different combinations of two or three of their big five, is there a group of two or three of them you foresee having the most success together? A grouping you worry could struggle together?

Any lineup with Maxey and Embiid will always have my full confidence; they have been outright dominant in just about every context for Maxey's entire career. When Maxey and Embiid share the floor together, Nurse can use their individual and joined dominance to get three extremely low-usage players – ones like Caldwell-Pope, Dean Wade and Dominick Barlow – on the floor at one time. That is a rare luxury, and it is one that will help him field a better defense.

Lineups with Maxey and James should inspire similar belief if they have strong defenders around them. Watching them coexist should be a ton of fun from a schematic standpoint; Nurse can get into his bag using either player as a screener, forcing and exploiting mismatches at will. The non-Embiid units with Maxey and James at the head of the snake should be hunting transition opportunities as often as possible.

I am concerned about the lineups led by Brown, Edgecombe and three reserves, only because it carries so much weight. That unit, like ones spearheaded by Edgecombe and Paul George a year ago, can unlock Nurse's optimal rotation if they become successful. Anfernee Simons should factor into this look; spacing is paramount in Brown-centric lineups. It is, perhaps, the best lane for Nurse to use small-ball centers like Wade and Walker, whose jumper looks quite improved.

What certainly helps matters as they get set to embark on forming a significant on-court partnership this season: Brown and Edgecombe have already bonded quite a bit off the court.

"I love VJ already," Brown said on Oct. 5. "That’s one of my favorite people in the world, and we just met."

"JB is one of my favorite people in the world," Edgecombe said last Tuesday. "He’s a great person, man. Someone that I still talk to damn near every day. He's always a leader. He's just – he's Jaylen Brown. He's a great person, and I – that's someone that I just have a really good relationship with, even though we just met like two months ago. Maybe we competed, you he always [said] like a ‘Good game young fella,’ you know what I'm saying? But other than that, it's been great. Just enjoying it. Obviously someone that I look up to in a way where it comes to like, how you take care of yourself, how you prepare for games, how you break down film, just anything like that.

From @JasonKantorBTB: Could Tyrese Maxey could finish top five in three-point percentage?

Here are Maxey's three-point percentages across his six-year NBA career:

This is something I actually wrote about back in August. Here is what I wrote about James and Brown factoring into the Sixers' offense being much more dunk-happy moving forward:

"Even while only playing 60 games in 2025-26, James threw down 97 dunks – tied for 23rd-most in the NBA. The only non-bigs with more dunks than James last season: Amen Thompson, Scottie Barnes, OG Anunoby and Trey Murphy III, all players logging considerably more minutes than James. He can get to the rim at will given his blend of strength and speed, and even now very few players can jump with James.

Jaylen Brown, for all of his memorable poster dunks in 10 NBA seasons – including a nasty one over Bona in the playoffs – only had 32 dunks last year, perhaps in part a product of his expanded scoring responsibilities that included a reliance on shot-making. Brown averaged 60.7 dunks per season over the previous three seasons; that sort of frequency would have had him among the Sixers' most prolific dunkers last year."

It is remarkable to think that the Sixers paid Embiid and George well over $100 million combined a season ago and got a total of 17 dunks out of it. This season, it should be James and Brown leading the pack; if Bona ends up with consistent playing time he will be right there with them.

MORE: Before trade, Jaylen Brown went to Morocco with two soon-to-be teammates

From @MillerStephenA: Highest usage percentage of any Sixers player?

Here are the usage rates of the Sixers' five starters last regular season and playoffs:

Much has been made of the Sixers' ability to downscale Embiid's offensive workload on this team – and they certainly can. But as I discussed in response to the first over/under, I think there is a misconception out there that Embiid will cease to be a high-usage offensive player. Embiid is one of the highest-usage bigs in NBA history, and it is hard for me to imagine Embiid not logging a significant workload given his history. Even on teams with less talent than this one, there have been times during which it felt like the Sixers could scale things back for Embiid. And then...

I will guess the highest usage percentage on this Sixers roster will be something like 31.0 percent.

From @MillerStephenA: How many games will the “Big 5” start together?

If I had to set an over/under for how many times Maxey, Edgecombe, Brown, James and Embiid start in tandem during the regular season, it would probably be something like 27.5.

It is not a particularly exciting number; you may be familiar with the fact that NBA teams play 82 regular-season games. But Embiid has missed more than half of the last three seasons; even if he ends up playing 41 games, it is not a lock that the Sixers will go over 27.5 given other injuries and absences are to be expected, especially for James.

This question speaks to the ultimate quandary of the 2026-27 Sixers season, one that will muddy every decision the organization has to make. How will the Sixers strike a balance between being responsible in managing the health of their vulnerable top players and creating as much chemistry and cohesion as possible with a new-look roster?

MORE: Does Jaylen Brown have a new home in the dunker spot?