Trendon Watford’s first Sixers start led to the first triple-double of his young career, with Watford playing a pivotal part in Philadelphia’s 130-120 win over the Raptors. Tyrese Maxey led the way for Philadelphia with 31 points, with Joel Embiid following closely behind with 29 points of his own.

Here’s what I saw.

A killer start for Trendon Watford

We are very early in the Trendon Watford experience, but it is already looking like Philadelphia should be thrilled to have him on a team option to return next season. Watford got his first opportunity to start on Saturday night, and he was one of their standout players, showcasing his offensive versatility within a much more. crowded top unit.

Last season’s colossal Sixers failure was driven in part by a lack of trustworthy decision-makers all over the floor, with defenses converging on Tyrese Maxey in waves to force anyone else to beat them. Watford has been a huge positive there, and a positive in multiple roles and spots on the floor. Most of his own offense has come by attacking downhill as a ballhandler, shielding defenders with his big body, and scoring with ease at the hoop, but his playmaking has been a delight from all over. Against Toronto, he threaded passes along the baseline out of the dunker spot, hit drive-and-kick feeds to shooters, and moved the ball away from trouble at just about every opportunity.

I wouldn’t quite put him on the Nic Batum level yet, but he is also a credible entry passer, which Embiid is going to appreciate quite a bit. He has a good understanding of when to add pace and height, which allows him to minimize risk while adding a ton of playmaking upside.

Watford’s scoring is not going to come as easily as it did against Toronto every night, but his instincts for when to turn it on and when to defer have been outstanding to open his Sixers career. They’re using just enough Watford out of the post against smaller matchups, and just enough of him at the point of attack to leverage his gifts there, without ever feeling like they’re forcefeeding him. It speaks to his game intelligence that he looks like such a clean fit after missing the entire preseason, forced back into the team midstream.

And how about this — 17 freaking rebounds! Watford has looked good physically coming off of the hamstring injury, and his help on the glass is a sight for sore eyes.

His impact was felt in a major way even before the 10th assist gave him a nice set of round numbers and his first career triple-double. Put it this way: I do not suspect Jabari Walker will get many starting opportunities moving forward.

Tyrese Maxey, still cookin’

The Sixers have this guy, Tyrese Maxey, who you may have noticed is pretty good at basketball. Their offensive identity is becoming more and more about him with each passing game, a reality that even Joel Embiid is buying into.

Every game, a different plot line emerges with Maxey. On Saturday, it felt like his use of hesitation moves was as good as it has ever been, with Maxey freezing defender after defender with feints after doing the hard work to get to the midrange. He was terrific driving to the basket, leaning up on his man to create just enough space for layups (plus the harm) at Toronto’s basket.

Now that he has enough tape to suggest he’s a willing and able threat from the midrange, defenders are put in a brutal decisionmaking spot around 15 feet and in. Do you prevent a clean look for the jumpshooter, or try to take away the paint? The Raptors were chasing ghosts there, and even when they made the right read, Maxey shot himself out of some trouble anyway, hitting a couple of gorgeous, twisting jumpers from in-between spots. Those makes sustained him on a night when the three-point shot was missing for a lot of the evening, and show how tough it is to stop him at this stage of his career.

There is still plenty of room for Embiid’s half of the partnership to propel them toward winning. Toronto played small in the frontcourt the entire night on the second half of a back-to-back, and after a somewhat slow start Embiid did an excellent job of establishing deeper position and punishing size mismatches. He doesn’t play in the post anywhere near as much as he used to, so it was nice to see him showcase some nice footwork and no-dribble moves to create separation in a crowded paint after Maxey and Co. found him around the rim.

(They still, mind you, need him more dialed in on defense, but that is hardly an Embiid-specific problem at this point. It’s just that the big guy can make a bigger difference there than anyone, and his impact is lagging behind his offensive polish.)

But Maxey is making it easy to forget that this other guy was an MVP just a couple of years ago. He is now the player Philadelphia can hardly live without, their offense mostly cratering whenever he hits the bench. They have tapped into all of the things that make him special this year, harnessing the downhill speed, shooting touch, and off-ball gravity in one complete package like never before. It helps that they have more than two or three guys who can dribble and pass.

It’s Maxey, of course, who deserves the most credit of all. He keeps finding ways to get better, and this year is less about partnerships or lineups than ever before. If he is on the floor, he is tearing people up. The sixth-year guard deserves every bit of praise coming his way to open the year, even if he can’t seem to make a free throw during an “MVP!” chant to save his life.

Transition defense, still optional

Sooner than later, the Sixers are going to have to figure out how to play defense. Maybe that is as simple as adding Paul George to the mix and playing him 30 minutes a night, but they have a few teamwide problems that need to be fixed no matter who is on the floor.

Nick Nurse spotlighted transition defense as a piece of low-hanging fruit they can improve on during his pregame press conference, and you can see why as they attempted to get matched up with the Raptors on the break. Quentin Grimes was the last man back on one transition possession in the first half, and rather than stopping the ball and forcing Toronto to make a play, he jumped out to a shooter and conceded the lane to the Raptors, forcing the two trailing Sixers into what was a must-foul situation. Nurse spotlighted communication as one of the big issues there, and it felt like he had a perfect example of that 90 minutes later.

You have to create rebounding situations to have the opportunity to get defensive rebounds, but even when the Sixers do, they can’t get out of their own way. Adem Bona and Grimes managed to fight each other for one clear rebound that they punted out of bounds, adding to a list of glass-cleaning catastrophes they are piling up early in the season. They can’t seem to find the middle ground between pursuing the ball and running into one another.

The frustrating part is that it does feel in their power to fix to some extent. They’re not getting any taller playing in these three-guard looks, but the second quarter showed a more competitive, more dialed-in group that held the Raptors to a much more normal scoring period. Enough possessions are failing on very basic principles to make you hopeful they’ll trend up with more time together and more chemistry built with one another. Until then, the swoons will remain frustrating.

Figuring out the second unit

I don’t think there is a way to avoid this completely, because Grimes is going to play “aggressively” in any lineup configuration, but Nick Nurse needs to think long and hard about how they’re going to change the structure of the second unit. Right now, the default setting for the Maxey-less group is to let Grimes cook, which has a fairly narrow path to success.

Pick the problem you’d like to focus on. Grimes’ overdribbling leads to turnovers and broken possessions; Grimes’ passing is a bit riskier than it should be; and Grimes’ shot selection can border on irrational. When you see him playing alongside more of a “first five” group, most of those tendencies fade away, and his strengths as a shotmaker and secondary creator come into view. After a brutal stretch as their offensive hub, Grimes caught fire in the back half of the second quarter as they leaned on his catch-and-shoot prowess. It makes clear that the problem is not specifically about him, but how they’re choosing to run offense and who’s on the floor in those minutes. It’s a contributor, though not a full explanation, to VJ Edgecombe’s current slump. The rookie is understandably down the pecking order with the starting group, but he is getting a little lost in the sauce with the backups, too, in part because possessions go by without him touching the ball.

On the other hand, Edgecombe is running into his own problems against ball pressure and is getting baited into going a bit too fast at times, leading to wild attempts inside the arc when his opportunities are there. He will eventually have to start making some threes again, but his recent stretch is a reminder that he ran very hot and cold at Baylor. Edgecombe didn’t lack ambition as a jumpshooter, taking multiple pull-up attempts against a sagging Raptors team, and simply couldn’t connect on his looks. With Edgecombe looking less dynamic, the whole group has looked creakier.

(I like how Edgecombe is coming along defensively. He had one silly foul on an and-one for Toronto in the third quarter, but acquitted himself well on some tough cross-matches where he was giving up size. And it speaks to his resilience that Edgecombe was able to shrug off his 2/12 start to come alive down the stretch, making a few huge shots while controlling pick-and-roll possessions with Embiid as they put the game away.)

There’s also a bit of a backup center problem, or perhaps just a Bona problem. He continues to be an anemic rebounder and chases every shot in the air as if it’s the last one that will ever go up. If he can’t high point the ball, it leaves him out of position to end the possession. Andre Drummond keeps getting called into duty when Bona’s first shift is a failure, and they might have to turn to Drummond as the primary backup sooner than later if Bona doesn’t put together a positive stretch of basketball.

Other notes

— The Sixers did a nice job of leaning into the early 2000s angle to go along with their throwback black jerseys. They played music from that era almost exclusively, had Hip Hop return to ring the bell, and certainly got excellent buy-in from the fans in attendance, who were ready to go nuts from the opening whistle. Great atmosphere.

If they win every game in these jerseys, the calls to bring them back permanently will be LOUD.

— I never thought I would see the day that Kelly Oubre would be a stabilizing force, but I find myself trying to mentally will him back into the game more than ever before. His outside touch was not there against the Raptors, but he was a solid source of secondary scoring yet again, providing the usual brand of funky midrange stuff and transition buckets.

— We’ll have to wait and see what the explanation from Nick Nurse is, but I suspect Jared McCain got a DNP so that he can spell their tired legs in the second half of the back-to-back. A reasonable choice from Nurse, even if it wasn’t what we expected coming in.