The Sixers lost the third quarter by 18 points in another cataclysmic second half, leading to their 121-112 defeat at the hands of the Toronto Raptors. Tyrese Maxey led Philadelphia in scoring with 24 points, with VJ Edgecombe and Quentin Grimes each chipping in with 21 of their own.

Here’s what I saw.

Get Maxey the ball!

Tyrese Maxey has had more dominant offensive showings to open this excellent season of his, but his first half against Toronto was as impressive a two-way stretch as I can remember him playing. He led the Sixers in scoring, as we expect him to do these days, adding an excellent floor game and a ton of defensive highlights to pull Philly back in front by halftime.

Although he had a defensive reputation coming out of high school and to a lesser extent at Kentucky, Maxey struggled to fight through contact, navigate off-ball situations, and balance his offensive responsibilities with defense early in his career. Years of experience and lots of time in the weight room have given him a fighting chance against most of the guards he goes up against, and with guys like Edgecombe and Grimes often taking the tougher assignments, Maxey now has opportunities to leverage his speed and improved floor reads into defensive playmaking. He had two steals and a block in 17 first-half minutes, flashing into space to kickstart Philadelphia’s transition game.

(This says as much about the other guys as his own play, but I thought the Sixers just looked much more solid on defense with him out there. The three-guard lineup featuring McCain/Edgecombe/Grimes had Nurse ripping his hair out in the second quarter.)

In the halfcourt, Maxey has become this version of the team’s Embiid, where they win the vast majority of his minutes and begin to drown the second he hits the bench. That is somewhat tied to the Embiid and George injuries, as they can’t help backup units float without their star guard on the floor, but it’s a testament to how many possessions end with Maxey procuring something out of nothing. If there are eight seconds on the clock and nothing is really happening, throwing the ball to Maxey is plenty viable this season.

Maxey hit Raptors players with a couple of mean crossovers on stepback jumpers, and I thought he did a much better job attacking switches than in previous games, quickly identifying when he had the speed advantage to take someone to the basket. There is still a part of me that feels he shouldn’t have to create so much of their offense from nothing, that they could be a bit more deliberate with what they’re running to create cleaner looks, but it’s hard to argue with the results he’s putting on the board.

Honestly, and this feels hard to believe, I thought he should have been even more involved in this game. Toronto made an effort to junk the game up with traps, zone looks, and other coverages to get Maxey off the ball and dent his effectiveness. But it felt like a game where he capitalized on nearly every opening the Raptors afforded him. Nowhere close to his best box score game, but a very good night.

Holy ball security, Batman

This game basically came down to one basic stat — turnovers. Philadelphia gave the ball away 21 different times, and they all chipped in to make that the problem of the night. Two for Justin Edwards, three for Dominick Barlow, three for Andre Drummond, four for VJ Edgecombe, three for Tyrese Maxey, and so on down the list. It was not quite as bad as the lows of the early Brett Brown/Joel Embiid teams, who gave the ball away as if they’d learned they weren’t allowed to have it, but it wasn’t that far off.

It was the driving factor in what turned into yet another disaster third quarter. The Sixers ended up losing the third period by 18 points, trying their damndest to dig out of the hole in the fourth and never getting over the hump. Turns out, you can’t leave all your work to be done in the final quarter over and over again without being burned.

I know that the big man isn’t exactly turnover-proof himself, but this is a matchup where you can see the value of leveraging the big man’s inside-out gifts. You can punish the Raptors for switching ball screens, use him in isolation when the guards are fumbling the ball around on handoffs and backcuts, and find some sense of calm around the rim on both ends.

Unlocking the young guards

Jared McCain’s inability to get going and Nick Nurse’s reluctance to play him has put a damper on what has otherwise been a good start for their young backcourt. Forget playing well; it has been a struggle for McCain to play period, with Nurse relegating him to around five minutes per night in recent games.

Nurse gave McCain a bit more runway against Toronto, effectively using him as Maxey’s understudy if not a backup point guard. Playing alongside Edgecombe and Grimes, he was handed the ball to initiate more possessions than in his “cardio” shift he played in the Clippers game. Mercifully, he hit his first shot of the season by creating separation from Immanuel Quickley on a midrange jumper, calmly collecting his two points:

The adage of “you only need to see one go down” apparently rang true for McCain, who found the confidence to step into a pull-up three during the same shift, knocking down his first shot from downtown since last December. If they can get him going on offense, they might figure out a viable path to winning minutes with Maxey on the bench.

Unfortunately, McCain was on the wrong end of a few mouse-in-the-house sequences on the other end of the floor, where you have to give some credit to the Raptors. Toronto did an outstanding job of using Scottie Barnes, Brandon Ingram, and RJ Barrett’s size against guard mismatches, and McCain specifically was punished by the bigger Raptors on several different possessions. Worse yet, his brief spark on offense faded quickly, with McCain hitting the showers for the night with a 2/7 (1/4 from three) shooting line. Not exactly the blistering pace of last season.

Moving on to the rookie. One of the major sales points for VJ Edgecombe, top three pick, was that NBA spacing would allow him to leverage his athleticism and make plays going downhill as both a scorer and passer. We have absolutely seen moments like that in his young career…in addition to Edgecombe’s youthful exuberance getting the best of him in space.

His first half was mostly a trainwreck on Wednesday, certainly on offense. Edgecombe’s habit of taking off one step too far from the basket is something they need to work on this season and (more likely) over his first full NBA offseason, and was at the heart of his struggles in Wednesday’s first half. Rather than taking one extra dribble to get deeper in the paint, Edgecombe continually forced up tough runners and layups as a result of needlessly long launch points. For perhaps the first time all season, you saw teammates growing frustrated with what Edgecombe was seeing (or not seeing) on offense, with Tyrese Maxey carrying a visible scowl on his face after a few scattered Edgecombe possessions.

But the game turned for Edgecombe after a two-handed flush on the break late in the first half. After hearing grief from his coach and teammates for much of the first 24 minutes, Edgecombe played with a new level of energy after that score, immediately stealing the ball from the Raptors and hitting Tyrese Maxey with a pass up the floor for a transition three. He closed out the first half with a short teardrop in the lane, and it was on from there. After depositing some clean layups on off-ball cuts and downhill drives coming off of screens, Edgecombe put together the sequence of the night, ripping down a defensive rebound before going coast-to-coast for a jaw-dropping dunk on the run:

With time, he is going to figure out his timing on the drives, not to mention how to pace himself in games, so there is steadier production throughout the night instead of these barrages we’re getting so far. It was a tremendously fun experience, with plenty to clean up.

All of that being said, I think this was a game where you felt the dueling priorities of “develop the young players” and “win basketball games” at odds for maybe the first time this season. To allow Edgecombe to play himself into a groove and for McCain to get a respectable amount of minutes in the rotation, Nurse had to live with painful stretches of defense, youthful mistakes, and funky lineup combinations that hadn’t spent meaningful time on the floor together before Wednesday. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t, but Nurse ended up on the wrong end of it in this game.

Other notes

— Quentin Grimes, Fourth Quarter Guy, is becoming a thing. He hit some absolutely humongous shots to pull the Sixers back into this game, shots he frankly has no business making with a hand in his face and little separation with which to get his shot off. Tremendously fun to watch when he is rolling.

— I thought this was the best Jabari Walker has looked all season. Not sure why, perhaps because Toronto plays a ton of like-sized players for him to battle with on the boards, but it felt like he was constantly around the ball, even though his stats were relatively pedestrian until his fourth quarter run. And anytime he hits a three, I think it’s worth celebrating.