PHILADELPHIA — A year ago, when the Sixers signed Paul George to a four-year, $211 million free-agent contract, team executives were realistic.

They knew it would take at least a season for their new star to mesh with their old ones, Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey. They had no idea whether their first-round pick, Jared McCain, would contribute at all.

Most significantly, they said, they added George in the hope that, in two seasons, in a loaded Eastern Conference, they could contend for the conference title — if, somehow, the landscape changed. If, somehow, the Celtics and Bucks as well as the emerging Pacers and Cavaliers failed to also improve, or possibly even regressed.

My, how the landscape has changed.

The only question: Has it changed enough to create a runway to relevance for an oddly constructed, asterisk-riddled Sixers roster?

We addressed this question a month ago, immediately after the Knicks foolishly fired head coach Tom Thibodeau, the person most responsible for their unexpected surge to conference competitiveness.

In that moment, Thibodeau’s departure stood as the most important of many developments that favored the Sixers.

The other major happenings were the ruptured Achilles tendons of superstars Jayson Tatum of the Celtics and Damian Lillard of the Bucks, both of which happened in the playoffs.

Since then, things got worse for almost everybody except the Sixers.

Their best-case scenario:

— Embiid plays between 55 and 60 games, doesn’t reinjure his thrice-repaired left knee, and enters the playoffs fit.

— George, sidelined by nagging and chronic injuries last season, returns fully healthy, even though he’s 35. Say you get 60 games from him.

— Maxey, refreshed by a 52-game season in which otherwise endurable injuries excused his absences, returns to All-Star form.

— McCain returns from knee surgery as a viable, 25-mpg, 15-ppg shooting guard who can run the point for five minutes a night.

And, of course, Nick Nurse, who is at least as good a coach as Thibodeau, gets to coach a predictable roster for an entire season.

If things fall right, the Sixers could make it out of the second round for the first time in 25 years. If that happens, winning the Eastern Conference final shouldn’t be out of the question. And if that happens …

OK, dream sequence over.

At any rate, through no effort of their own, the Sixers are closer to returning to the playoffs, and winning once they get there, than they have any right to expect to be.

What’s happening

The biggest development: yet another ruptured Achilles, this one suffered by Tyrese Haliburton. Now, the Eastern Conference will be without Lillard, a Hall of Famer; Tatum, an MVP candidate; and Haliburton, a two-time All-Star and the conference’s best pure point guard.

The fallout of these injuries affected some other seismic events.

The Bucks seem intent to have journeyman Kevin Porter Jr. act as their point guard, a position to which he never has been trained. They actually released Lillard, who had two years and $112.6 million left on his deal, which they “stretched” over the next five seasons to create salary cap space. With that space they signed Pacers free-agent center Myles Turner, who has never seen an All-Star Game and whose stats and metrics have declined each of the last two seasons, even as the Pacers improved.

Turner will be paired with former MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, a position-less freak athlete who refuses to definitively commit to staying in Milwaukee, and is not asking for a trade: “Probably. Probably. We’ll see,” he recently told the IShowSpeed livestream.

This sort of ambiguity wrecks teams before they get started.

The Sixers rejoiced.

For all his talents, Antetokounmpo has never won anything without point guard Jrue Holiday.

Neither has Tatum.

Holiday won the 2021 NBA title the year he was traded from New Orleans to Milwaukee, then won the 2024 title the year he was traded from Milwaukee to Boston (via Portland, for a week). In the wake of Tatum’s injury, one might think the Celtics would want to keep their glue guy around — but no. They instead sought luxury tax savings of about $40 million, trading Holiday to Portland last week. They hope that seventh-year shooting guard Anfernee Simons can run their team.

The Sixers rejoiced.

The next day, the Knicks completed their lengthy (and completely unnecessary) coaching search and hired Mike Brown.

The Sixers rejoiced.

What it means, maybe

Brown has been fired either during or after three of the last five seasons in which he was a team’s head coach. He has never won a playoff series on a team that didn’t include either LeBron James, Kobe Bryant or Kyrie Irving; the Knicks don’t have a LeBron James, Kobe Bryant or Kyrie Irving.

With all due respect to Guerschon Yabusele, the Sixers’ free-agent reserve who landed in New York, the Knicks are appreciably worse today than they were when they lost to the Pacers in the Eastern Conference final.

So are the Pacers. So are the Bucks.

All of this makes the Cavaliers the consensus betting favorite to win the East, generally followed by the Knicks and an intriguing Magic club that just traded for Desmond Bane. The Celtics still have a solid team. The Pacers weren’t entirely the Haliburton Show. And who knows how far the Greek Freak can take the Bucks.

But, really, can the Sixers be that far behind?

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