Instant observations: Cavs dominate Sixers in horrific game for Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid

The Cavs dominated the Sixers from start to finish on Wednesday night, earning a 133-107 victory that Cleveland controlled for close to 48 minutes. No 76ers fan should think about this game again after they finish this recap.

Here’s what I saw.

A stinker from their stars

If the Sixers’ first quarter against the Raptors on Monday was a flash of who they can be at their best, the opening stanza against the Cavs was a reminder of how low they can sink when they aren’t dialed in to start a game. Cleveland has sputtered for most of this season, unable to live up to lofty expectations, but they punched Philly in the mouth on both ends of the floor.

The Sixers’ complete inability to secure a defensive rebound was the early story of the game. Cleveland had eight offensive rebounds in the opening 12 minutes, and it honestly felt like more, because the Sixers managed to pick up fouls or knock the ball out of bounds to keep the ball with Cleveland even when they prevented the Cavs from grabbing the board outright. After the first four or five extra possessions, you began to expect that forcing a miss was simply not enough, with the Sixers outmuscled at the rim, outrun in space, and unaware of how to read a ball off the rim, based on the available evidence.

Rebounding was a teamwide failure, but it’s hard not to focus on how poor Joel Embiid was to start this game as we look for a cause of their slow start. Cleveland stretched the Sixers out and forced constant perimeter rotations, and though Embiid was arguably good enough in the early part of possessions, he rarely got back into the play or had strong enough hands to finish the possession after the shot went up. Several second-chance possessions were within his power to prevent, and the Cavs either neutralized him or went around him as if he wasn’t there.

It was even uglier on the offensive end, where Embiid felt completely out of sync with the game and his teammates. He traveled twice in a short sequence toward the end of his first shift, losing his footing while trying to work through a Jarrett Allen puzzle he used to be able to solve in his sleep. Embiid had four turnovers in his first seven minutes of action, and the Cavs hardly needed easy trips to the basket on the break with the way they were dicing the Sixers up in half-court offense.

The game began to turn in the second quarter, in part because Embiid stopped looking like a player picking the sport up for the first time. Riding success from the midrange, the big man felt his way into the contest and, mercifully, got a couple of fouls calls after trying and failing to grift his way to some easy points early. But that success didn’t last long, with Embiid unable to generate much of anything outside of midrange twos. Those will put points on the board, but the Cavs did well to wall him off from the paint and then make his life miserable if he was able to get there. It was a good enough shooting night on paper, but a low-impact game by his standards.

Embiid was bad in a louder way than Tyrese Maxey early, but I thought Maxey was a similarly huge culprit in Philadelphia’s struggles, and he didn’t get much better from there. Maxey was just 3/10 at halftime, and his shot diet was a total disaster. Maxey hoisted up difficult, contested jumpers as the Cavs made him work for everything he got, and “what he got” wasn’t a whole lot.

Cleveland made a concerted effort to get the ball out of his hands in early offense, showing high on almost all ball screens and forcing a lot of behind-the-back passes to his side into the hands of Embiid in the trail spot. With Maxey constantly having to work his way back to the ball after seeing the early pressure — and with the team generally struggling on offense — it felt like he got too focused on trying to hunt his own looks, missing passing windows that could have helped the supporting cast get rolling.

Context aside, he also just wasn’t good when he got higher-quality opportunities. Maxey missed open threes where the shots barely connected with the rim and couldn’t seem to find his touch all night. You’re going to have games like these, but it was a poorly-timed stinker in light of Embiid’s own rough start.

An appeal for a bolder approach

There are a couple of ways the Sixers could have played the second half from a lineup perspective once they went down big to Cleveland. They chose the relatively conventional approach by playing “normal” lineups and hoping that changing the faces while maintaining the same strategy would eventually flip the game.

This is an example of why I thought Nick Nurse’s reputation as a bold adjuster in-game was overstated coming off of his stint in Toronto. He has some interesting wrinkles in his bag, like the box-and-one strategy that he used to great effect against Steph Curry in the Finals, but his ideal state is playing a short rotation for heavy minutes and leaning on his best players and 1A gameplan. I don’t even necessarily disagree with that mindset, mind you.

I thought this game was screaming out for a more dramatic approach once they were deep in the hole. Play Adem Bona next to Embiid. Try to get McCain going and go Maxey/Edgecombe/McCain (or Maxey/Grimes/McCain) and just bomb away from three in the second half. You could have even done both at the same time, playing a zone with both bigs able to help near the rim (though I don’t suspect that would have solved their rebounding problems). I have been one of the biggest McCain critics and skeptics all season, but if you can’t find more time for him in this one, you at least owe it to him to get him time in the G-League, I think.

This game just felt uninspired the whole way through. The biggest departure from norms was playing Trendon Watford at all, and he didn’t exactly do much to stop the bleeding on defense.

Take your lumps, young man

I love that VJ Edgecombe is confident enough as a rookie shooter to go 1/5 from deep in a half and not question whether he’s going to get another one up if he’s open. On the other hand, I think there are times where he has to respond to a poor shooting start with a more aggressive, downhill approach on offense, and Wednesday’s first half was one of those.

This was an ugly game for Edgecombe, and not just on offense. Going through the gauntlet for the first time, we’ve seen Edgecombe turn in some defensive masterclasses against very tough opponents, most notably against Knicks star Jalen Brunson at MSG. But the Cavs, and particularly Donovan Mitchell, gave him fits on Wednesday. Edgecombe really struggled to deal with the combination of outside touch, pace, and power that Mitchell brings to the table, with the rookie swinging wildly at several Mitchell drives, only putting himself in foul trouble in the process.

Edgecombe never found any semblance of rhythm in this one, which is a shame, because they could have used his typical blend of do-everything action as a slasher, passing-lane bandit, transition player, and floor spacer. It happened for a few plays here or there, but it was a bad night overall.

Other notes

— Given how out of reach this game felt in the first half, I would argue the most consequential moment of the game was Dominick Barlow’s fall and removal from the game in the third quarter. Attacking Evan Mobley on the break, Barlow was turned away and fell awkwardly afterward, clutching at his back and remaining on the floor for quite a while.

Dominick Barlow was helped back to the Sixers locker room after he took a hard fall after being blocked by Evan Mobley.

Prayers up to Dom 🙏pic.twitter.com/24CJTk9QLX

— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) January 15, 2026

The Sixers ruled him out for the evening with a back contusion before the third quarter had ended. We’ll have to wait for more information before making any sweeping conclusions, but losing Barlow would be a pretty big blow as they finally get Oubre and Watford back up to speed. Though he has tailed off some lately, Barlow has been a regular starter with real defensive value, and changing up the starting five would create some real rotation difficulties.

— I am sick to death of two-for-one possessions that are just a force-up attempt 28 feet from the basket on the first shot of the sequence. They have been a horrific end-of-quarter team all year because of this approach, and I can’t imagine that whatever internal data they use to justify the approach is telling them that getting out-executed at the end of almost every 1st, 2nd, and 3rd quarter is a good thing. Attempt to get a decent shot every so often!

— Jabari Walker’s impact on a game is often not reflected by what you see in the box score. You’ll go through a stretch where it feels like he has been involved in five or six straight great possessions, and you look at the stat sheet to see a single rebound and no other registered stats. How can that be?

He does appear to be this year’s “playing hard is a skill” award recipient. Walker was part of one of the most fun stretches of the game in the third, with the Sixers using him to pre-switch with Embiid and play up to the level in ball screens, even aggressively blitzing at times alongside Tyrese Maxey. On the other hand, the Cavs spent the back half of the third daring him to shoot, and Walker couldn’t hit anything, clanging corner three after corner three and slowing whatever momentum they had created through his own defense and energy.

— I’m not sure that it’s fair to say Paul George kept the Sixers in the game when you consider that his made jumpers didn’t bring them any closer than eight or nine points in the second quarter. But he was the only guy doing much of anything positive in the first half, so congratulations to him.

— There were some absolutely disastrous decisions to drive into Evan Mobley in this one. Four blocks in, maybe show a little discretion, my dudes.