No one knows what’s in store for the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2023-24 season. Whether James Harden stays with the team into the regular season or not, we at least know the dates, times and locations for when the Sixers will play basketball.

Last season saw the Sixers have a relatively easy first-half schedule before an extremely tough second half, particularly from March onward. Their 54-28 record was the third-best in the entire NBA as they went 29-12 at the Wells Fargo Center and 25-16 away from it. This year's schedule again includes long road trips in the latter half of the season and some marquee matchups.

Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and the Sixers will open their 2023-24 season with a pair of road games vs. the Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday, October 26 and Toronto Raptors two days later, where new head coach Nick Nurse faces his former team.

The Sixers' home opener will be Sunday, October 29 against the Portland Trail Blazers and kick off a five-game home stand that includes another matchup with the Raptors, one against the Phoenix Suns and one against the Boston Celtics. Philly’s games in the play-in tournament have already been released, with each of their four games against East Group A foes occurring in a two-week span in November.

The Sixers will have 29 nationally televised games, the sixth-most in the league, and have a brutal stretch near the end of their season where they play at home just twice in the span of 11 games. They will host the Houston Rockets on the afternoon of MLK Day and, like last year, will finish their season with an afternoon game against the Brooklyn Nets, though this time it will be a home game. Should Harden get his trade wish, the Sixers and Los Angeles Clippers face each other after the trade deadline on Sunday, March 24 and Wednesday the 27th, with the latter being at The Center.

Back-to-backs continue to be a part of NBA scheduling and while the Sixers will have 14, including their second and third games of the season, most of them either contain consecutive home games or are in the same time zone, such as the Orlando-Charlotte trip in January and Philly-Washington swing in February.

The Sixes have no games on New Year’s Eve or New Year's Day and their next game after the holiday will be at home. Compared to the rest of the league, the totality of their traveling throughout the season is pretty light. (I'm sure there's a ref/travel violation joke to make here.)

With the Sixers' full schedule being released, let's discuss the five biggest games of the regular season.

5. First home matchup vs. Nets, 2/3

The Nets and Sixers, as usual, will face off four times this season: Sunday, November 19 and Tuesday, March 5 in Brooklyn and Saturday, February 3 and Sunday, April 14 in Philly. Each matchup should be packed with energy for numerous reasons.

Ben Simmons still receives ire from Sixers fans, though some of that intensity has died down. Or it's being saved for his next game in Philly. The energy from Simmons' (healthy) return to the Wells Fargo Center was palpable and with a Saturday game for the Nets' first visit to Philly, that should continue to be the case.

The Nets and Sixers got into one of the most heated and wild playoff games in recent memory in Game 3 of their first-round series. Embiid kicking Nic Claxton in the groin is not lost on the Brooklyn center. Mikal Bridges surely isn’t forgetting about how the Sixers traded him away on draft night.

While the Nets may not pose a serious threat to the Sixers, they may still be a team that Philly really wants to take down. Head coach Jacque Vaughn may take the mantle from Nurse as the opposing coach that Embiid will taunt for complaining about how he gets officiated during the playoffs.

4. Season-opener vs. Bucks, 10/26

This season, the Sixers will take on the Bucks thrice. In addition to the season opener at Fiserv Forum, they will face them at home on Sunday, February 25 and again on the road on Thursday, March 14.

One of the reasons why the Sixers were reasonably seen as having a shot at the title last season was how well they stacked up with the top-seeded Bucks. They split the season series against them, including a spectacular comeback win in Milwaukee to snap a 17-game winning streak from Giannis Antetokounpo's squad.

While obviously the home game against the Bucks will bring some serious energy to the Wells Fargo Center, any game against them will be an important litmus test for the Sixers. Antetokounmpo is always a tough matchup and Brook Lopez is starting to emerge as the best one-on-one defender against Embiid, stonewalling him and blocking his shots repeatedly across their many matchups.

3. Christmas matchup vs. Heat

The first Sixers game of 2023-24 that leaked was their Christmas matchup against the Miami Heat, which will take place in South Beach. With or without Damian Lillard, Philly will look to extinguish the Heat at 8:00 PM EST after Saint Nick makes his worldwide gift-dropping trip.

The Sixers and the Heat will also face off on Valentine’s Day in the City of Brotherly Love and on Thursday, April 4 in Miami.

The Heat will continue to be a Sixers rival with Jimmy Butler leading the way. They will be a key Eastern Conference foe after running the table to the Finals last season. Regardless of who they have, the Heat almost always prove to be a tough matchup for the Sixers.

The Sixers will be playing on Christmas for the second consecutive year. Last year's X-mas matchup featured a win in Madison Square Garden and the first of many reports linking Harden to a potential return to the Houston Rockets. Harden inadvertently leaked this game, too, but his reporting prowess may not be seen this offseason due to his estrangement from the team.

2. Home matchup vs. Nuggets, 1/16

The Sixers and Nuggets will face each other twice, with their first matchup coming on Tuesday, January 16 in Philly and their second one scheduled for Saturday, January 27 in the mountains. The game in Denver will conclude the NBA's Rivals Week and be on ABC.

(The Sixers will also, for some reason, host the San Antonio Spurs on Monday, January 22nd to kick off Rivals Week in an NBATV game. Is Brett Brown really looking to take his old team down? Perhaps the revenges of Charles Bassey and Julian Champagnie? One can only imagine how this matchup got chosen in a week intended to highlight rivalries. But I digress…)

Just when Embiid looked to be pulling ahead in the debate over who the better player is between himself and Nikola Jokic, he blew a few tires and flew off the course. Jokic, meanwhile, kicked it into overdrive and led the Nuggets to a championship, losing just one game over the final two series.

Embiid may never recover in the court of NBA fan opinion but he can still continue his dominant performances in head-to-head matchups with Jokic. His 47-point game against Jokic may have had some real sway in the MVP race while his decision to sit out the matchup in Denver with a calf injury angered many fans and pundits.

1. First matchup with Celtics, 11/8

After a tough seven-game series that ended in a catastrophic defeat, the Sixers surely want to get another crack at the Boston Celtics. The two rivals will face off twice in the preseason and then they'll see each other for real on Wednesday, November 8 at the Wells Fargo Center.

Philly hosts Boston again exactly a week later in an ESPN game and faces them in TD Garden on Friday, December 1 and Tuesday, February 27. While the Sixers' ability to hang with and beat the Bucks showed they were worthy of being in the title conversation, their performance against the Celtics showed why they weren’t taken as seriously as other teams. That trend seems very likely to continue.

Philly lost both times they played in Boston — once when Boston was without three starters and a fourth, Jaylen Brown, got injured in the second quarter — and lost on a last-second Jayson Tatum triple in one of their home matchups. It took a 52-point game from Embiid to beat them by two in their final matchup of the regular season. Harden also played a big role in that one, too, contributing 20 points and 10 assists (five of which came in the fourth quarter).

With the schedule released, the Sixers will turn their attention to working on the roster that they hope will lead them to success in their 82 games (83 if they reach the in-season tournament championship game) and set them up with a chance to make a playoff run.