There’s no way that the Philadelphia 76ers imagined that they’d find themselves in this position exactly halfway through their season.

After 41 games, they’ve compiled a 25-16 record and have fallen to the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference. They got leapfrogged by the Indiana Pacers, who just beat them for the second time in two weeks thanks to a herculean effort from TJ Warren.

With all of the talent on their team, Sixers fans should be expecting a top 3 spot, with the Bucks and Celtics seemingly the only teams that have better or equal talent on their squads.

Instead, the Sixers are on the outside looking in regarding home-court advantage in the playoffs.

To add insult to injury, Jimmy Butler, who made waves when he left in the offseason to join a Miami team that seemed too raw, has led the young Heat to third place in a very competitive east.

The Toronto Raptors are ahead of the Sixers, too. They enjoy the fourth spot even though they lost Kawhi Leonard, who famously knocked Philadelphia out of the playoffs with a soul-crushing final shot in Game 7 of their Eastern Conference Semi-finals matchup last year.

The worries about the Sixers being such a top-heavy team seem to have a grain of truth to them. Their best five of Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, Tobias Harris, Josh Richardson, and Al Horford are averaging 85.7 points. The rest of the team is averaging 46.9, and if you look at bench players who have played 20 games or more, that drops to 36 points per game.

With Joel Embiid out for a while, Philadelphia will be hard-pressed to replace his 23.4 points per game.

The Sixers have a few other worrying stats. According to basketball-reference.com, they’re also on pace to shoot 21.3% less free throws compared to last year. They finished the first half of this season with way less than 1000 free throws, compared to the 2,258 that they shot in the 2018-19 regular season. Their point differential of +3.3 is also the second-worst out of the top six teams in the Eastern Conference, barely edging out the +3.1 of the Pacers.

I was surprised to see that the Sixers were still the second-favorites to come out of their conference last week. They’ve got a big game coming up next against the Brooklyn Nets, who just got Kyrie Irving back to the lineup. If they can’t get a good number of wins against the Nets, Bulls, and Knicks (the teams they play over the next four games), this season is going to get even worse.

Philadelphia is not and should not be happy with simply being a playoff team. They have far too much talent for that. However, a thin bench and untimely injuries could ultimately derail their plans. If they don’t have a decent run in the playoffs this year, you also have to start wondering how willing their owners will be to continue fielding such a huge salary bill.

Ben Simmons’ contract extension kicks in next year, which means that the salaries for their top five players will balloon from a shade under $105 million this season to over $130 million in 2020-21. No owner in their right mind would be willing to spend that kind of money on a team that doesn’t seriously compete for a title.

The Sixers have half a season left, plus the playoffs, to show us what they’re made of. Right now, they don’t look like they deserve any hype.