The Sixers lost a double overtime thriller after Tyrese Maxey’s game-tying three in regulation led to a pair of crucial missed free throws in overtime, with Philadelphia falling to the Hawks in a 142-134 battle.

Here’s what I saw.

Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and then still losing

The Sixers looked to be on the verge of a disappointing home loss against Atlanta, a moment that would have driven home what fans believe about the “old guard” of this team. If Embiid and George aren’t helping them win, why should the fans care about whether they’re available or not?

Both players managed to hang in there for some big effort plays coming down the stretch in regulation. As the Sixers played the foul game and watched the Hawks miss free throws in the final 90 seconds, Embiid and George both came up with big offensive rebounds, with Embiid scoring a bucket on his to keep slowly marching toward a tie score. George’s rebound may be the single most consequential play he has made for the Sixers — after Dominick Barlow failed to convert an and-one, George dug out an extra possession on the ensuing rebound, finding Tyrese Maxey for the game-tying, arena-rocking three:

Persistence pays off. So how did they arrive here?

Tyrese Maxey got to play the hero at the end of this game, but for a solid three quarters, his ball security has been a sore spot on a few too many nights this season. Protecting the basketball has long been a strength of Maxey’s, to the point that it inspired questions about whether he was too protective of the ball, afraid or perhaps unable to make the aggressive, cross-court passes it takes to unlock defenses. With more touches and responsibility this year, he has played fast and loose with the ball in some turnover-heavy games like Sunday’s.

Turning the ball over is a backbreaker for any team, but it’s especially killer for the Sixers, who are bad in transition defense even if the opponent is running off a missed shot. Maxey gifted the Hawks three different “pick sixes” in the first half alone, and he didn’t exactly do much to put himself back in the play after coughing up some ugly giveaways.

It would have helped Maxey bail himself out if he had been able to build any sort of momentum as a shooter, but he was ice-cold from downtown against Atlanta, and many of his threes never came close to finding the net. Maxey has been way short on a lot of his misses lately, which is typically seen as a sign that your legs are failing you. Perhaps, as we have discussed many times in this space already, they should be making an effort to scale back his minutes. At least there’s an NBA Cup-related mini-break upcoming.

But through it all, there was a concerted effort to put pressure on the rim and the officials. His shot nowhere to be found, Maxey kept putting points on the board the old-fashioned way. No runners dropping, no midrange mastery, just downhill bully ball. He had another double-digit night at the free-throw line due in part to his ability to read defenses in closeout and swing pass situations, hitting the gas the moment the ball hit his fingertips. Maxey’s ability to succeed in a hybrid role, attacking as both the point-of-attack guy and the player one pass away, is part of what makes him special.

It was, by all accounts, a choppy game for Maxey, who has set his own bar so high that a massive box score game like this one felt disappointing for a majority of his minutes on the floor. Like a ball control running back, he kept moving the chains forward with four-yard runs, buying himself and the offense enough time to hit the big plays they needed to win the game.

And then, with the game on the line to be won at the free-throw line, he bricked back-to-back freebies at the end of the first overtime session. It is hard to ask him to do more for this team than he has offered up to this point, but you simply have to have those. He went back to work in double overtime, his minute count pushing beyond 50, attacking Alexander-Walker over and over again on drives to the basket. But he couldn’t wipe away the stain of his game-winning opportunity, and knowing Maxey, it’s that sequence he will hold onto the most from this game. So will most of us, truthfully.

Joel Embiid returns

As is tradition in Sixers land, all eyes were on Joel Embiid as he took the floor for his first game in three weeks. Would he go through the usual growing pains after a layoff? Was his timing going to be there on offense? If you didn’t have any background coming into the game, you could have viewed this as a business-as-usual night for the franchise center. Cool as you’d like from the midrange, a little less engaged than you’d hope for as a rebounder, and a massive presence the Hawks had to keep track of at all times.

One of the most impressive things about Tyrese Maxey’s ascent is that he essentially spent one summer in the gym with Embiid and got the timing down on the pick-and-roll plays that James Harden mastered with the big man in the middle of the floor. Falling back into their old rhythm, Maxey kept finding Embiid in the sweet spot around the free-throw line, and Embiid rose into those jumpers from the elbows as if no one was within eight feet of him, dropping some easy first-half buckets to open his account for the evening.

Embiid will need to clean up some things on the defensive end, either by improving his mobility with more game time or by expending more energy. Against Atlanta, there were a fair number of possessions where the Hawks either got clean looks at threes or second-chance opportunities at the rim because he deemed it unnecessary to move or jump. While I can understand minimizing his high-point leaping during a game, it doesn’t give him an out to repeatedly stand with his feet glued to the floor when a possession is there to be ended. He was better on this end in the second half and even overtime, going past whatever his minute limit must have been to try to help his team get a victory. For that, he deserves credit.

In the short-term department, they lost Embiid’s regulation minutes handily against Atlanta. It doesn’t feel fair to blame him for “style of play” issues or dragging the team down so he could cook from the mid-post, as was the case in the Chicago game, because Embiid mostly deferred in crunch time, including on one must-have possession that ended with Paul George missing a wide-open corner three. But for all the offensive good he did in the first half, it felt much clunkier after halftime, and the minutes limits for Embiid and Edgecombe had a lot of wonky effects on their rotation in this one.

The best of Grimes, the worst of Grimes

You thought the Sixers were going to get through a game with a bunch of players returning from injury and escape without a scare of some kind? Surely, this was your first night watching the Sixers.

Quentin Grimes was hauled off the floor late in the first half in a rare game stoppage due to concussion protocol, having been sandwiched between two Hawks players before slamming to the floor flat on his back. Although Grimes looked okay relatively speaking, it was the right call to make in light of a potential head injury. Not the sort of thing you leave to chance.

Grimes wasn’t just available after halftime, but back on the floor immediately, replacing Edgecombe in the starting lineup. While I can get annoyed as anyone with his tendency to freelance, Sunday’s first half felt like the right balance for the first three quarters of the game. In the starrier lineups, Grimes relocated off-ball and made concise moves, attacking closeouts or letting catch-and-shoot jumpers go. When Maxey and Embiid came off the floor, Grimes took the responsibility for himself, becoming a frequent point-of-attack and late-clock option for Philadelphia. The shotmaking ceiling is absolutely there, as Grimes showed in the closing moments of the third quarter on a ridiculous sidestep three.

The only downside to these plays is that they embolden Grimes to bite off a bit more than he can chew as a shot creator. He was at the center of some very ugly possessions during the critical stretch of the game to open the fourth quarter, turning the ball over on one noteworthy drive when he just bulldozed through traffic without a plan. So it goes.

Other notes

— Paul George’s next big shot as a Sixers player will be his first.

— I do not know why the Sixers are having so many problems tracking the other team’s hot shooter midway through a dominant performance, but letting Jalen Johnson get a wide-open look at a three in double OT for points 39, 40, and 41 was gut-wrenching to watch. Let anybody else beat you and focus on the guy actively destroying you as a three-level scorer.

— You’re telling me VJ Edgecombe looked better physically after getting some time off after playing a huge volume of minutes to start the season? If only there had been some way to predict this.

Jokes aside, it was comforting to see Edgecombe on the floor and looking spry after missing multiple games with a calf issue, with teams very on edge about the potential repercussions of playing through those. Bumped down the pecking order with Embiid and Paul George on the floor together for the first time all year, Edgecombe still made a couple of early highlight plays for Philly, including a transition three on the right wing and a gorgeous layup on the break after he sliced through the air, briefly teasing the potential for a poster. But his offensive success, at least as a scorer, mostly wore off after that.

The defensive end is where I thought the time off made a big difference. Edgecombe played with the sort of ferocity that put him on the scouting radar in high school, junking up a few Hawks possessions and creating an early steal after fighting through multiple actions. After an iffy start on that end of the floor, Edgecombe had settled in as a thinker of the game before the brief injury layoff, and it was fun watching him marry his tools and instincts for what felt like the first time in a while.

Now hit some more threes, my guy.

— What is it with this team and crunch time free throws?

— Not everyone will love hearing this, but I think you can usually tell when Embiid is feeling like himself when he has a good sense of when to punish the opponent with a bit of foul-grifting. His timing was on against Atlanta, punishing some reach-ins and overaggressive defense by swinging his arms through and putting himself at the stripe. Something to monitor.

— Coming off a very good game in Brooklyn, Jared McCain had a clunker in the follow-up. Looked very small trying to attack the Hawks inside the arc, couldn’t find openings as a shooter, and he was in catch-up mode on defense for most of the night.

And yet, he still had the stones to hit a massive three in overtime after Paul George’s night was over. Not afraid of the moment, that’s for damn sure.

— I swear the Sixers have 3-4 possessions per game where they have a clear rebound with no opponent contesting and just give it away. Maddening.