Paul George was a two-way force in a massive Sixers win over the Hornets on Saturday, hitting the go-ahead three in a 118-114 victory that looms large in the Eastern Conference playoff race.

Here’s what I saw.

Everything but the rebounding

Let’s start with this: I appreciate that this actually felt like a game with meaning for both teams. It was chippy in the first five minutes with high activity on both ends of the floor. It’s a reminder of what basketball can be when the stakes are high, not that the NBA has noticed, as they continue to plow through 82 games with a third of the league tanking through the final quarter of the season. In any case, you can see the outline of the Sixers’ ceiling whenever they get a few minutes to deploy all the stars.

Paul George definitely looks like a player who used the suspension to get his body right, because as he declared after his return vs. the Bulls, he looks a lot more explosive on both ends of the floor. George had three first-half steals, crowding Hornets players before sparking fast breaks with his hand-eye coordination, and he had some of his best driving moments as a Sixers player against Charlotte. As the Hornets tried to pad the lead in the closing moments of the second quarter, George offered some powerful downhill attacks to beat back the tide, keeping this a five-point game at halftime. Deep in crunch time, surely a bit fatigued playing in his second game in two months, George summoned the strength and the footwork to earn a critical trip to the free-throw line in the final two minutes.

This was, in my mind, perhaps the best example of why Paul George was brought to Philadelphia in the first place. He hit the huge corner three to take the lead with a minute left, and stole the lofted entry pass that stole an important possession from the Hornets moments later. George’s composure throughout this game, whether they were down double digits or locked in a seesaw battle in crunch time, is part of what you pay for when you hire the veteran mercenary in free agency. He has been tremendous over his first two games post-suspension.

Joel Embiid was the trigger man early in the game, putting Diabate in early foul trouble before busting up Ryan Kalkbrenner with an inside-out approach that the rookie could not solve. Embiid has come back from the layoff shooting the lights out from three, owed in part to increased synergy with VJ Edgecombe in ball screens. Edgecombe did a lot of good work at the point of attack, drawing defenders with him to the paint before hitting a kickback to the perimeter, with Embiid scoring a good chunk of his 21 first-half points out of those plays. After a long and sometimes miserable defensive game for Embiid, the big man summoned a couple of monster plays in crunch time, including a massive block of Brandon Miller on a potential game-tying three in the closing moments.

And the Sixers, with their lineup back at full strength, are back to playing switch-heavy defense rather than defaulting to throwing two at the ball and overhelping to concede open corner threes. On the game’s first possession, you could see what a difference that can make, with Philly forcing the Hornets into a tough contested three at the end of the shot clock. Only one problem: Mousa Diabate managed to snag the offensive rebound, and a Hornets three followed.

Charlotte has drawn a lot of attention for having the league’s best offense since the start of 2026, but it’s as important that they have dominated the glass as the No. 1 rebounding team in the NBA during the same time period. Every guy on the team is a threat to create second-chance possessions, which the Sixers learned the hard way when reserve guard Coby White extended a possession not once but twice in the second quarter. And this quickly emerged as the game’s theme, inarguably the biggest swing factor in the game. Charlotte’s 10-3 margin on the offensive glass was more than enough to make up the five-point margin at halftime in what was otherwise an evenly-played game.

It’s not all on Joel Embiid, but I would put plenty of this on his shoulders. The Sixers are basically anchored to drop coverage because he’s not built to play switch-heavy defense, and that can be fine, but you can’t be a team that sits in drop and also gets completely obliterated on the glass. For as well as he moved at times on offense, he was often stuck in the mud as Diabate dipped and dove around him, constantly outbattling him to tip the ball up and keep possessions alive.

When Embiid did his job and boxed somebody out, the Sixers often failed elsewhere, allowing the guards and wings to swoop in uncontested. I am not entirely sure what these guys are thinking or seeing when the ball is mid-flight, because I watched several players (VJ Edgecombe and Quentin Grimes for sure) vacate the space the ball was going toward to sprint toward a tangle of bodies and give the ball back to Charlotte. These guys somehow can’t even time their jumps correctly, which would be funny if it wasn’t absolutely maddening.

After the Hornets opened the game on a three-point heater, the Sixers responded with a killer offensive stretch midway through the second, riding a Maxey/Edgecombe/Grimes/Edwards/Embiid lineup to climb back into the game. From that point on, this was an even game on basically every front. Outside of watching them rebound, this was as fun as late March basketball gets.

Welcome back, Tyrese Maxey

Watching the first quarter, I was more in the camp of admiring Tyrese Maxey for trying to get back on the floor as soon as possible, rather than thinking he was doing much to impact the basketball game. The opening quarter gave off colossal decoy vibes for their potential All-NBA guard, with Maxey basically uninvolved in the offense except to catch passes out of double teams the Hornets sent at Embiid. Save for a breakaway layup where he had the funniest foot race of all-time with Kon Knueppel, he was relatively uninvolved.

Thankfully, they play 48 minutes for a reason. Maxey was handed the keys to open the second quarter and took it to Charlotte, offering a quick reminder of how essential he has been to the team all season. Running a bench unit with PG by his side, Maxey was hitting midrange turnarounds and pull-up threes before reinforcements arrived later in the quarter. With Embiid back on the floor, Maxey continued his assault in an off-ball role, nailing a spot-up three from the corner before hitting a deep pull-up three to inspire a Hornets timeout and lots of trash talking from No. 0.

Any trepidation he had about putting the hand in harm’s way and any bad memories of last year’s ill-fated attempt to play through a similar injury disappeared. When the Sixers went down 11 early in the third and many would have assumed it was about to get out of hand, Maxey was there for a couple of important buckets to keep the Sixers within striking distance. Things got even more interesting early in the fourth quarter, when Philadelphia made its move to try to steal this thing. Nick Nurse turned to Andre Drummond to help fix their rebounding problem to open the final quarter, underlining how big that problem was. But it was Maxey who pulled down a long one, outran the Hornets, and threw it down with his left hand for one of the highlights of the season:

Enjoy your poster, Miles Bridges. Or don’t, I don’t particularly care if you enjoy much of anything. Way to go, Tyrese.

Other notes

— Credit where it is due, Andre Drummond helped change this game in the fourth quarter by adding the interior presence they needed to cut down on all the second-chance points for the Hornets.

— Should we call him De’Anthony Grimes or Quentin Melton? I’ll hang up and listen.

— It was an uneven night for Maxey’s backcourt mate, VJ Edgecombe, who battled foul trouble for most of the night. I thought he was on the wrong side of a couple of 50/50 calls while guarding up against Bridges, but that tends to be how it goes for rookies. Nothing you can do about that.

Despite those issues, Edgecombe played an important role in this one, combining with Maxey to keep the Sixers afloat in the middle portion of the third. He hit Brandon Miller with a nasty crossover for a lefty layup, dropped a runner on the Hornets out of a big Sixers timeout, and then hit a run-finishing three from the left corner, bringing the Sixers to within seven points. Edgecombe somehow missed two putback opportunities in the fourth quarter that turned into Charlotte threes on the other end of the floor, only to follow those up with an unbelievable pull-up three out of a timeout, pulling the Sixers in front while waiving off all his vets.