Paul George is injured. Again. The Sixers are in trouble. Again. Nothing changes with this team.

Think back. It’s difficult, sure. It’s especially difficult in light of that press release that the 76ers dropped Monday: that Paul George had knee surgery earlier in the day. That he would be evaluated again sometime before training camp, in late September. That a 35-year-old former star with three years and $162.4 million in salary-cap costs left on his contract seems to be breaking down like a car long past due for an oil change.

Think back. It’s difficult, sure. It’s especially difficult in light of the Sixers’ attempt to Winston Wolf the situation Monday night, sending out the message that the operation was merely an “arthroscopic cleanup.” This wasn’t major. This wasn’t a big deal. Don’t you worry. PG will be ready for the regular season.

» READ MORE: Paul George came to the Sixers to help close out wins. Will injuries keep that from ever happening?

Think back to Sept. 30. Sixers headquarters in Camden. Media day. From the outside, there was still some optimism. There was still some belief. There was Tyrese Maxey. There were veterans with experience and savvy and toughness. There would be Joel Embiid at some point. And there was Podcast Paul, spinning a soliloquy that would rival any scoop of stuff that a politician would shovel.

“We all have aged well,” George said that day. “I still feel youthful. I still feel young. And I still feel I can play at a high level. The beauty of it is in having the youth around us in [Kelly Oubre], Caleb Martin, Tyrese. You need those engines as well. You need those young legs as well. It’s just a good mixture we have here. We have the veterans who know how to win when it matters. But then you have the guys who can get us to that point where we can put our imprint, whether it’s late in games or late in the season. It’s having that balance. You can’t have too many on the older spectrum, and teams aren’t ready to win on the younger spectrum. We’re right in the middle where you need to be to compete for a championship.”

The middle of their primes? Not George. Not Embiid. Not anymore. The middle of the Eastern Conference? The injuries that Embiid, George, and Maxey suffered last season didn’t take the Sixers from an elite team to a good or mediocre team. Those injuries took the Sixers from a team with high expectations to a team that couldn’t win a third of its games. Those injuries exposed the Sixers as an empty Easter egg: a pretty shell on the surface but hollow inside. The Sixers were in the middle, all right. Of a free fall.

So where’s the rip cord? Maxey is apparently healthy. But while team president Daryl Morey told reporters last week that Embiid is “on track” for training camp, Embiid still hasn’t been cleared for full basketball activities. And now there is this surgery for George, a procedure serious enough that it has put his availability for training camp and the preseason, at a minimum, in jeopardy — and camp doesn’t get underway for another three months.

As for the rest of the roster — even as promising as first-round pick VJ Edgecombe looked in his first summer league game … before spraining his thumb — it doesn’t matter. Not when it comes to the 2025-26 season. That assertion is not meant to be mean or glib. It is an accurate representation of something Morey himself said in Las Vegas when asked about the Sixers’ reliance on Embiid, George, and Maxey. The team got younger, no doubt, but it didn’t necessarily get better.

“For us to be a championship team, we need all three of our key guys healthy,” Morey said. “I don’t think we can do it without that. I would like to say that, but I don’t see it. So, yeah, I do think we’re very dependent on all those guys, including Joel.”

» READ MORE: Tyrese Maxey is thrilled that Trendon Watford has joined the Sixers: ‘We need a guy like him’

At least Morey’s evaluation of the situation reflected some of the Sixers’ reality. That’s more than can be said for George’s shiny, happy sales pitch last fall. If that seems too harsh a judgment on someone who has been struck by bad fortune, well, it would be easier to show George some grace if he had given any indication last season that he was pushing himself to be more than a shadow of the player he once was. When your budding career in podcasting seems as high a priority to you as your performance on the court, you’ll have to forgive people for being skeptical about whether you’re capable of contributing to a contending team.

Now he’s hurt. Again. This was supposed to be some kind of masterful strategy by Morey and the Sixers last season, throwing money at the biggest name on the free-agent market. It instead has turned into one of the worst player-personnel moves in the history of a franchise rife with bad decisions. Think back. It’s difficult, sure. But can you remember a time when you felt good about the Sixers?