Tyrese Maxey carried the Sixers on offense with a 38-point scorcher, leading the 76ers to a 109-104 comeback victory over a feisty Hornets team. VJ Edgecombe chipped in a huge three in the final minute to go with 19 points from Anfernee Simons and 16 from returning wing Jaylen Brown.

Here’s what I saw.

A little help from their friends

Certainly, the story of this game is one of the stories of Philadelphia’S season so far: Tyrese Maxey continues to be an absolute rockstar and is quickly playing his way into early MVP talks. As the frontman for one of the best teams in the league, he has done whatever is required every single night, toggling between roles and piling up points as the lead attacker on offense.

This was a much tougher task than most nights, with the Sixers down Embiid and LeBron after a spirited win over the Knicks on Friday. After playing nearly 38 minutes the night before, Maxey made it look easy in Charlotte, throwing a devastating first punch to lead with 19 first-half points. His three-point shot was falling, and that opened up some space for pull-ups inside the arc, an area that Maxey has improved in as the years have worn on.

Getting off to a good start was critical for Maxey because the Sixers had to absorb a body blow from the Hornets in the opening quarter. Charlotte’s bottom-ranked offense shot the cover off the ball in the first 12 minutes, with Grayson Allen and Brandon Miller rolling from deep to lead them to 37 first-quarter points. The rest of Maxey’s running mates were slow to get going, with Jaylen Brown stuck in the mud and VJ Edgecombe struggling after an initial no-dip three opened his account for the evening.

Unfortunately, the Sixers took Maxey’s early dominance somewhat for granted, with the offense devolving into a series of switch-hunting screens before asking Maxey (and other guards) to try to win isolation matchups over and over again. It was particularly bad in the closing minutes of the third quarter, when Philadelphia essentially ran the “cook his ass” offense for four straight minutes in a small-ball configuration. I’m not sure inventiveness would have made the difference with how dead their legs looked, but the alternative was making Maxey beat his head into a wall for most of 24 minutes.

Philadelphia needed some help from their reserves to get this one, and their guards came through in a big way. Anfernee Simons has been on a heater this week and continued rolling against Charlotte, ending the first half on a one-man run that flipped the game in the blink of an eye. Nurse has shown no hesitation playing him next to other small guards in the backcourt, which has helped him turn Simons loose as a movement shooter and off-ball threat. His release is as quick as any Sixers shooter in recent memory (and thus, in history), with Simons only needing to see one shot go down before pivoting into immediate heat check mode. And he sustained that well into the fourth quarter, offering Maxey a secondary scorer to draw just a bit of attention away — Nurse has started using him as a ghost screener to force teams to decide if they’d rather give up a switch or a wide-open three to a deadeye marksman.

The surprise minutes came from rookie LaBaron Philon, who helped tie together the bench as they tried to get Maxey some rest. Philon had an excellent sequence midway through the second where he hit a relocation three from the left wing, locked up Brandon Miller at the point of attack, and then drew a foul on the break after leaking out past his man. Although he missed both free throws, he would make up for it moments later by sending fellow draftee Christian Anderson spinning in circles before hitting a teardrop in the lane.

Then there was Jabari Walker (decidedly not a guard), who returned from a brief injury layoff to play a critical frontcourt role off the bench. Although he didn’t offer as much as you’d hope on the glass, Walker’s safe set of hands and straight-line driving were huge additions to an offense-needy group, with the reserve forward scoring some big buckets as a roller alongside Jaylen Brown. He hit a huge three during a fourth-quarter push to bring the game within three.

All throughout, sandwiched between those little contributions from his teammates, was Maxey. A runner here, free throws there, even a clutch defensive sequence or two to inch Philadelphia closer to victory. Philadelphia ended the game on a 15-3 run with Maxey leading the way, and by the time it was all said and done, he walked away with an outrageous 38-point outing. This is the sort of performance that puts you in early MVP conversations, and he has more than earned that right, becoming whatever Philadelphia needs no matter who is in the lineup. Hell of a ballplayer.

Hurting, or just rusty?

Jaylen Brown missed Friday’s Knicks game with what the team labeled “left patellar tendiopathy” after not being able to participate in shootaround that same morning. He had the look of a guy with knee soreness in the first half against Charlotte — Brown had his shot blocked on multiple midrange jumpers, and struggled to create any form of separation as an isolation scorer.

How much you pin on physical ailments may depend on what you’ve thought about Brown to start the season. He has been a miserably slow starter in most games this season, and Brown was able to put some things together as a driver in the second half. I thought he missed a passing opportunity here and there as the Hornets swarmed on his drives, but felt his teammates wasted a pretty good playmaking game from him overall, clanging a lot of open jumpers after he did the hard part.

Elsewhere in the starting lineup, the Sixers really could have used a better game from VJ Edgecombe, who had much more runway than normal to play his way into a rhythm. This game featured a compilation of his worst traits as a driver, with Edgecombe consistently starting his gathers from a step or two too far out, ultimately making his finishes much tougher than they should have been at the rim. He can be somewhat forgiven for not having his usual degree of explosiveness on the tail end of a back-to-back, but it was just a sloppy game across the board.

So of course, with the game on the line in the final minute, the ball found its way to Edgecombe with time running down on the shot clock. After a failed attempt to drive the lane, he hit Grayson Allen with a stepback jumper and cashed out, nailing the biggest shot of the night for the second day in a row:

Hell of a kid, hell of a win.

Other notes

— Free throws were arguably the story of the game for Philadelphia, with the Sixers ending up a disgusting 15/23 from the charity stripe. A huge deal in what ended up being a single-possession game down the stretch.

— Dean Wade put together one of the great glue-guy games in recent Sixers history, leaving a huge impact on the game while bricking every single jumper he took. He put together a double-digit assist game as a connective piece, came up with a couple of massive turnovers in crunch time, and pulled down a critical offensive rebound that turned into a Simons three they desparately needed down the stretch. Awesome game.

— Out of the gate, this was an excellent response from Adem Bona, who was a useful contributor on the glass without always pulling down the rebounds himself, and he was even fairly disciplined while trying to anchor the defense around the rim. And then the rest of the game happened! He is only ever one play away from completely veering off a cliff as a decision-maker.

I mean, take your pick on the head-scratching plays. Bona going iso mode and tossing up a runner that got blocked? Bona taking an early-clock three from the corner? Bona jumping over a player because of a simple pump fake? They need a better backup option ASAP.