NBA 2K26 sim has Paul George lead 76ers past Magic, 107-103

Paul George hijacked NBA 2K26’s play-in sim and dragged the Philadelphia 76ers past the Orlando Magic, 107-103, after a 17-point deficit. The finish looked less like a tidy prediction and more like a stress test for how much the game leans on star takeover logic when a playoff game turns ugly.

The simulation did not even get off the ground cleanly. Technical difficulties forced the matchup into two videos, but once the game finally ran, Philadelphia’s comeback took over the entire story. Orlando opened well enough to hold a small early lead, then watched the Sixers flip the game over the final 24 minutes, outscoring the Magic 61-50 to turn what looked like a comfortable edge into a narrow escape.

George was the center of it all. He finished as player of the game with 36 points, 10 rebounds, three assists and three steals, the kind of line that makes the sim feel almost scripted around a single veteran closing punch. Tyrese Maxey and rookie V.J. Edgecombe both failed to get over 20 points, which pushed George’s impact even further into focus. In a matchup where NBA 2K26 already listed Maxey at 93 overall, Joel Embiid at 92, and George and Edgecombe at 83, the sim still handed the biggest swing to the older wing, not the highest-rated guard or the top-rated injured star.

That matters because the real game had a very different shape. The actual 2026 SoFi NBA Play-In Tournament meeting between the No. 7-seeded Sixers and No. 8-seeded Magic was scheduled for Wednesday, April 15 at 7:30 p.m. ET at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia, with the winner moving on to face the Boston Celtics and the loser getting one more chance Friday against the winner of the No. 9 vs. No. 10 game. Philadelphia also entered without Joel Embiid, who was unavailable after appendectomy surgery, leaving the offense to Tyrese Maxey and the perimeter group around George, Quentin Grimes and Edgecombe, while Adem Bona and Andre Drummond handled the middle.

Orlando had already won the regular-season series 2-1, which makes the sim’s Philadelphia comeback feel even more like a reminder that NBA 2K26 can still tilt toward star-driven fantasy when the moment gets tight. That does not make the result useless. It does suggest the game’s logic is better at staging a dramatic closer than at predicting how the 76ers actually win without Embiid: through balance, defense and pressure possessions, not just one Paul George explosion.