Hope for the Sixers is on the shoulders of Paul George and Joel Embiid. It’s their only way through.

Hope is not a strategy. It is a lack of options. Right now, it is all the Sixers have.

They can hope that Joel Embiid is back for good. They can hope that his knee responds to its latest test. They can hope that he is still a player who makes a team a contender. They can hope that there is something left besides an epilogue.

The Sixers can hope that Paul George will be the player they envisioned once he is playing regularly with Embiid. They can hope that what they’ve seen so far is not a player in precipitous decline. They can hope that they don’t need him, at 34 years old, to magically transform into the player he once was.

We may never know what the Sixers were hoping to accomplish before the NBA trade deadline. One of the lessons of the Dallas Mavericks’ decision to trade away Luka Dončić: Any information that ends up public is information somebody wanted somebody else to know. Otherwise, it will remain secret. The trade deadline rumor mill is not a hole cam. It is a player flipping over one of his cards. Or, it is a player who is mucking those cards and telling you what they were.

» READ MORE: Still harboring playoff hopes, Sixers kept their core intact at NBA trade deadline

Were the Warriors ever interested in George, as at least one report suggested? Or were the Warriors hoping that Jimmy Butler would get the message and save them from considering Plan B? Would the Hawks really have been willing to take on George’s contract for a price that behooved the Sixers to execute a deal? Or was it helpful to the Hawks for the Cavaliers to believe that they weren’t sold on selling De’Andre Hunter? Maybe Atlanta really was interested in George, as a replacement for Hunter. The point is, we’ll never know for sure. The only people who tell you otherwise are the ones most useful to the guys at the table.

What we do know is that George still belongs to the Sixers. Same goes for his contract, which guarantees him an average of $54 million over the next three seasons.

We know that Embiid still belongs to the Sixers. He was never going anywhere. The contract extension he signed in late September made him ineligible to be traded until the offseason.

Whether or not the Sixers were committed to riding with Embiid and George, that is what they have.

This was always the most likely case. Remember, the only reason George ended up with the Sixers is that his former team was unwilling to pay him what the Sixers were. That team, the Clippers, were 28-22 without him entering Thursday night, eight games better than the Sixers are with him. Point being, the market already spoke last offseason. Rare is the contract signed by a player George’s age, in the circumstances it was signed, that retains positive value six months later.

» READ MORE: Injuries have derailed Paul George’s Sixers debut season. ‘It’s super frustrating.’

George has been far from worthless. He just hasn’t been worth $50-plus million per season. He is in the midst of his least efficient season since he was 25 years old, back when he provided more offensive volume and defensive intensity. His .369 three-point percentage would be his lowest in a full season (i.e., more than 31 games) since his fourth year in the league. But there are plenty of variables in play not related to age. Primarily, the absence of a centerpiece star like Embiid was supposed to be.

The more you think it through, the more you work it out on paper, the more it comes down to what everybody already knows. The Sixers’ best hope is to continue to hope whatever they were hoping when they signed Embiid to that offseason extension.

The Sixers did not have the option of tanking. They owe their first-round pick to the Thunder if it falls outside of the top six. They currently have the seventh-worst record in the NBA. Even if they finish with the sixth-worst record, it will only mean an improvement in their lottery odds of drafting there or higher. The best they could have hoped for is improving their odds of picking in the top six, from somewhere in the 30% range to somewhere in the 60s. That’s fact. No matter how hard they tanked, it would be nearly impossible for them to catch the NBA’s true tankers. There was no way for them to guarantee themselves more than a two in three chance at drafting in the top six.

» READ MORE: With a humiliating salary dump trade of KJ Martin, Sixers are cutting costs ... and who knows what else

The calculus will break your brain. Numbers theory, game theory. All we know is where they ended up.

The only way out is through.