Joel Embiid and LeBron James stunk it up in the Sixers‘ NBA Cup game against the Cavs, leading Philadelphia off a cliff in a 119-95 defeat in Cleveland. VJ Edgecombe was one of the few bright spots for the 76ers, scoring 19 points on just 13 shots.

Here’s what I saw.

Goodbye, NBA Cup

This is as joyless a Sixers performance as we have had in a while, certainly since at least the Knicks series in the spring. The veterans evidently decided that this one was optional before the game.

Joel Embiid had his worst stretch of the season to start this game, playing with no lift or life in a matchup where his size and strength advantages should be a huge value-add. Some of the problem comes down to his missing jumper, as he has been completely unable to make catch-and-shoot jumpers to open the year. Those are shots I will continue to live with even during this long funk, because he has to make them to open the floor for the other guys, but his inside-the-arc approach in the first half was disgraceful. He settled for leaning and fading jumpers repeatedly, even when he had defenders like James Harden on him with a foot in the paint. Evan Mobley was able to stand him up in the post repeatedly, which really shouldn’t be possible.

LeBron James wasn’t a whole lot better, giving the ball away repeatedly in a flashback to their first half against Cleveland in the home opener. He remains one of the league’s most dangerous transition weapons, but it was clunky out there for the first 24 minutes, with LeBron dribbling into walls and struggling to pass with the same precision we’re accustomed to seeing. I’m not sure if he was right physically, as Nurse only played him a shade over 14 first-half minutes, but Philadelphia did not pick up the passing slack without him. With LeBron on the bench, they managed to turn a three-on-one break involving Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, and Jaylen Brown into a moving screen deep in the second quarter, nearly undoing the work they had done to make the game close at halftime.

And yet, there was VJ Edgecombe, battling early foul trouble but carrying his teammates all the same. With the vets clearly off the pace, they made it a point to move aside and give him a runway, and Edgecombe was able to tap into the midrange bag that flashed throughout the second half of his rookie season. A couple of midrange turnarounds helped unstick the offense, and his three-point shooting was outstanding, with Edgecombe making three first-half threes that included a no-dip jumper from the corner late in the shot clock.

Nick Nurse recently told reporters that Edgecombe’s main assignment this year is to bring energy, and this game was a great example of how valuable that can be. With Embiid running in mud and LeBron lethargic on both ends of the floor, it was up to Edgecombe to breathe some life into the game and keep it close enough for those guys to have a chance to wake up. He brought his hard hat on the other end, too, coming up with three first-half steals as the Sixers began to turn the screws on Cleveland in the halfcourt.

(Repeat after me — this is part of the value of assembling a team with this sort of top-end depth. Even when two of your best players act as if they’ve never seen an NBA floor before, there’s a chance that one of your young stars might bail you out.)

Philadelphia’s reserves made a few key contributions early, too. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope picked up a tough flagrant closing out against James Harden, but that came on the heels of two back-to-back stops in transition defense, blowing up Cavs runouts with little more than effort. Jabari Walker’s ability to defend as a five remains suspect, though he made enough strong contests to hang and bothered the Cavs on the offensive glass, picking up a putback and drawing a foul with his positioning on two different possessions.

But after 2.5 quarters of holding onto the rope, the Sixers never got anything meaningful from Embiid and LeBron, and every run that brought them close to tying it up seemed to end with a possession that died in one of their hands. I would put this in the small handful of worst-ever Embiid performances, and I’ve seen just about every game of his career. Embiid was deep into his stinkbomb when he had Mario Hezonja guarding him one-on-one in the post, and he opted to unleash a behind-the-back pass in LeBron’s direction that resulted in an immediate turnover. It was a snapshot of how unserious his approach was, and it was roughly the moment that the game started turning from winnable to a Cavs route. That’s without mentioning his lackadaisical approach to rebounding that allowed the likes of Thomas Bryant freebies off of Cavs misses.

If it feels like I am excusing LeBron for his horrendous outing, I will make clear that he might have been even worse than Embiid. It’s hard to laud a guy for his elite decision-making and then ignore him making the wrong call on seemingly every offensive touch. To make matters worse, because it was an NBA Cup game where differential matters, LeBron played fairly deep into the fourth quarter in a blowout situation that would likely have him parked on the bench another night. His reign of terror continued, punctuated by LeBron throwing a pass into the crowd that the team hardly even reacted to. And why would they, down 22 with less than six minutes left and down 22?

Underneath it all, there are lingering questions about whether this start to the season is sustainable if the Sixers don’t begin cleaning up their worst habits. Philadelphia needed a dose of offensive creativity on the structural side, and they spent most of the last 2.5 quarters playing iso ball that bled seconds off the shot clock and narrowed their options to contested jumpers late in the shot clock. Their habit of starting slow, which they’ve been able to overcome most other nights this season, bit them hard in this one, and may balloon into a bigger crisis if they lose any of the special fourth-quarter sauce they’ve had to start the year.

I lean toward this being more of a bad night than crumbling structure hiding in plain sight. But it would be nice for them to begin putting together more four-quarter efforts, relying less on furious comeback efforts and end-game execution.

Other notes

— The Amazon Prime broadcast evidently thought Bona’s first name is pronounced “Adeem” for some reason. Gotta read the media guide, fellas.

— I have to add that Tyrese Maxey was also not good in this game, and am not excusing him for struggling, but setting him aside because it felt like he was at least interested in being a participant in the game.