Between early-season injuries to James Harden and Tyrese Maxey, the Philadelphia 76ers haven't been at full strength for most of the 2022-23 NBA campaign. But now that Harden and Maxey are both back in the fold, head coach Doc Rivers has begun to experiment with his starting lineups on a game-by-game basis.

"We told our team there's three lineups that we'll be using from this point on," Rivers told reporters after the Sixers’ 113-112 win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday. "… Some nights, it'll be to match up to them; some nights, it'll be to make them match up to us."

Rivers' willingness to experiment with the starting lineup isn't guaranteed to work, but it's the exact type of thing he should be doing at this stage of the season.

After their 120-110 win against the Los Angeles Clippers on Tuesday, the Sixers are in third place in the Eastern Conference. They have a half-game lead over the Brooklyn Nets and Cleveland Cavaliers. Barring another wave of injuries, they should comfortably finish in the top six of the East and avoid falling into the play-in tournament.

The Sixers should be vying to win as many regular-season games as possible to secure home-court advantage as long as possible. The Boston Celtics appear to be running away with the No. 1 seed in the East, but there's only one game separating the second-seeded Bucks from the Nets and the Cavaliers.

However, it's far more important for the Sixers to test out different lineup combinations ahead of the playoffs to see which groupings work best with one another. They need counterpunches when their initial lineups and schemes run into problems against certain opponents throughout a seven-game series.

Rivers didn't divulge which three lineups he had in mind as his potential starting units, but it's fairly easy to guess his three options. The first is what the Sixers headed into the season with: Maxey, Harden, Tobias Harris, P.J. Tucker and Joel Embiid. Another features De'Anthony Melton in place of Maxey—which the Sixers have used in each of their past two games—while the third would be a three-guard lineup with Melton in place of Tucker.

Of those three lineups, the Harden-Melton-Harris-Tucker-Embiid group has played the most time together this season. The Sixers have outscored opponents by 11.1 points per 100 possessions with that five-man unit on the floor in a 469-possession sample size, largely fueled by a sizzling offense (124.25 points per 100 possessions, 60.0 effective field-goal percentage).

The Harden-Maxey-Harris-Tucker-Embiid lineup has played 291 possessions together, and the Sixers have outscored their opponents by 12.0 points per 100 possessions with that quintet on the floor. This group's offense is slightly less effective than the Harden-Melton-Harris-Tucker-Embiid unit (117.5 points per 100 possessions, 56.7 effective field-goal percentage), but it's allowing opponents to score only 105.5 points per 100 possessions.

The three-guard lineup featuring Maxey, Harden and Melton alongside Harris and Embiid has gotten the least amount of run so far. The Sixers have outscored their opponents by 5.4 points per 100 possessions with this group on the floor, albeit in only 49 possessions. The three-guard lineup is allowing 117.0 points per 100 possessions—the worst of the three starting lineup options by far—although the sample size is still small enough that it's impossible to draw any grand conclusions about its efficacy.

The defensive concerns with a Maxey-Harden backcourt merit this kind of experimentation. Other top East teams such as the Celtics, Nets and Cavaliers won't give the Sixers two places to hide Maxey and Harden defensively, which could prove to be their undoing over a seven-game series. Melton is by far their best defensive weapon in the backcourt, and he's a good enough long-range shooter—he's hitting 39.3 percent of his career-high 5.9 three-point attempts per game this season—to keep opponents honest on the other end of the floor.

Melton is nowhere near as much of an off-the-dribble threat as Maxey, but the Sixers don't necessarily need that alongside Harden (who controls the offense on most possessions) and Embiid (whom the typically offense runs through). Maxey is a starting-caliber player, but putting him in a super-sub role might better optimize the Sixers' rotation.

"I'm a professional at the end of the day, and I feel like I am a starter in this league, but I feel like our team is so good that we could have multiple people starting," Maxey told reporters after the Lakers game.

Having six starting-caliber players is certainly a first-world problem for the Sixers. If Rivers does switch between starting lineups on a game-to-game basis, though, it could cause some locker room rifts unless everyone buys in.

"We don't know if it's gonna work for us," Rivers said after the Lakers game. "Maturity. That's the key. If we can handle it, it'll be really good for us. Because I think we have enough guys that we can do that with. But we may find out that it doesn't work well and go to one lineup. But I do think for the best of the team, it works."

Tucker, who signed a three-year, $33 million contract with the Sixers as a free agent this past offseason, might not be thrilled about bouncing in and out of the starting lineup. He reportedly had multiple other offers in free agency, but his relationship with Harden from their Houston days seemingly influenced his decision to come to Philadelphia.

Then again, the three-guard lineups could be a way to buy Tucker some regular-season rest. The 37-year-old has been playing through a pinched nerve—which he described as a "dead hand" right before Christmas—which perhaps explains his reticence to catch-and-fire on corner three-pointers like he did in Miami last year.

Maxey might be the key to this three-lineup strategy, though. The 22-year-old was averaging nearly 23 points per game on 46.2 percent shooting prior to his foot injury in mid-November, and he becomes eligible for a lucrative extension this offseason. Putting up huge numbers as a starter could help him secure a max or near-max deal.

After the Lakers game, Maxey demonstrated maturity far beyond his years while discussing his move to the bench.

"You've gotta be a professional at the end of the day," he said. "If that's what they decide the best option is for the team, then you have to accept that. You have to go out there and be a star in whatever role that they give you. I've said that since I was a rookie. At the end of the day, you've gotta be a star in the role that they give you."

Maxey lived up to that words Tuesday against the Clippers, knocking down three triples early in the fourth quarter to help the Sixers stretch their lead and regain momentum with both Harden and Embiid off the floor.

“After the game, I told Georges [Niang], I was like, 'We might not win that game if he doesn't go on that stretch there,” Harris told reporters afterward.

It’s easy to buy in to changes when they lead to wins. The real test will come if losses begin piling up at any point.

"At the end of the day, we've all gotta have the same ultimate goal, and that's to win,” Maxey said after the Lakers game. “It's not to start or it's not to be out there or to hear your name called. But you've gotta be mature about it, though. It's a tough decision. It's a tough pill to swallow because it's a pride thing, probably. At the end of the day, the only score that matters, the only time that matters is we're winning at the end when there's all zeroes and they're not."

If the Sixers can get Maxey, Melton and Tucker to stay bought in, it should only get them more ready for the playoffs, when game-to-game adjustments often help decide a series.

Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac or RealGM. All odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.