Paul George’s return made a difference but still left the Sixers short of a win in Phoenix, with the Suns squeaking out a 118-116 win over Philadelphia.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— Nobody was happier to see Paul George out there on the floor than Tyrese Maxey, who had been handed a borderline impossible task as the solo star to open the year. Every time he tried to hunt a switch, turn the corner, or step into an open shot, you could bet with certainty that help was coming. Maxey’s overall shot quality has been brutal at all levels through no fault of his own.

The world seemed to open up for him on Monday night. On drives where the defense would have been able to collapse on him and ignore their shooters, George’s man often had to hug him tight in fear of the catch-and-shoot look. So Maxey got downhill for some relatively easy floaters and runners, scoring points inside the arc that have been hard to come by this season.

That was arguably the theme of this game, certainly the first half at a minimum. For the first 12 minutes, Paul George looked like he was shooting a basketball for the first time in his life. A bit of rust is not shocking in his first game of the year, though it was certainly a bummer for anyone hoping he’d have an eye-catching debut in a Sixers uniform. But even as he tried to get up to speed, George kept lanes open that simply didn’t exist for his teammates across the first five games. And he was a viable second creator to pair with Maxey — George repeatedly broke Suns players down off of the dribble, using long Euro steps and crossovers to carve space in the paint and play setup man for others.

It has been so long since we’ve seen real offense that it was startling to see a two-star team get this much better. Philadelphia got up 26 threes in the first half alone, representing over half of their attempts from the field. The vast majority of those shots were quality looks, with open catch-and-shoot jumpers supplemented by pull-up shots from Maxey and George. And as the Suns tried to track George off ball and stay connected, Maxey was able to get free off-ball, boosting his perimeter shot quality in a meaningful way.

After that fast and easy start, Maxey had enough confidence flowing to drop some crazy stepback threes on the Suns in the second half. Whether it was 24th-birthday energy or just an ordinary good night at the office, Maxey got one-on-one matchups in space and left the Suns helpless with some beautiful second-half jumpers. He worked in and out of the crossover, hit a behind-the-back move into a stepback three, and got deep into his bag to keep the game close as others struggled in the third quarter:

— Guerschon Yabusele has had a fair amount of issues at the five, most stemming from the fact that he simply isn’t a center. The Sixers have not been able to protect the rim or rebound with Yabusele as the nominal five, and those tend to be the two most important markers of whether you can hold up there. But on a team that has been a little light on shooting, they may need to keep their options open at backup center even after Embiid comes back. With Paul George back to add some size and athleticism on the wing, the Sixers looked much better as a group in the Yabu at center lineups.

He’s an easy player to work into different lineups on offense because he does a lot of the little things that add up to easy looks. Yabusele is a great screen-setter, a quick passer, and he looks more comfortable beyond the three-point line with each game, with the Frenchman readjusting to the deeper NBA line. Taking Drummond out of the game for Yabusele reliably made the Sixers better on offense Monday, and that was not an accident. The separation Yabusele created with screens for their pull-up shooters was hard to ignore, setting up Maxey and Lowry and others for a lot of clean looks.

But set the rest aside: Yabusele’s shooting is what swung this game. The Suns evidently didn’t buy his 3/5 start from the field and started to change their coverage to funnel open shots to their reserve big. There was some hesitation at times, with Yabusele needing to gather and set himself, but he fought through consecutive misses to make some monster threes down the stretch, all but forcing Nurse’s hand to keep him on the floor.

They will need to find a way to keep him on the floor by any means necessary, I think. If it forces uncomfortable conversations about Drummond’s role on the fully healthy team, you still have to make it happen.

— I may have been slightly too quick to write off the older guards, even if I am concerned about relying on Eric Gordon and Kyle Lowry in 2024 (and 2025). With more reliable shot creation thanks to George’s arrival, Lowry and Gordon’s roles looked closer to what we expected coming into the season. Gordon got to bomb away from three and attack closeouts, and Lowry was more of a connective piece and relocation shooter than anything else. Perhaps most importantly, they shot the hell out of it on those cleaner looks, and you can bet there are more of those to come.

The Bad

— They were integrating a major piece and Phoenix was trying to get the ball away from him, but I thought the Sixers did a really poor job of getting the ball to Tyrese Maxey down the stretch. They bogged down in crunch time after they went away from him, and Maxey immediately got to the free-throw line once he got the ball on an ATO with a minute to play. Don’t overcomplicate things, man!

To take this a step further, I am not going to dwell on Paul George being rusty on offense and committing some bad turnovers. That’s a concern if it becomes a trend, not in his first game back following a layoff. But after the way this game played out, it’s really hard to figure out why they just let him run the clock down at the end of the game. Had he been rolling, I would have understood it, but he was ice cold and took a shot that only would have forced overtime if it went down.

Terrible process, terrible result.

— I’m more down on one of these guys than the other, but Kelly Oubre and Caleb Martin have just not found their place on this team yet. I guess it would be more accurate to say that Martin has been fighting it in a big way as a shooter while Oubre has been unpredictable in the worst way. The Sixers need stability from those spots, and they’ve gotten a lot of clunky jumpers and forced attempts from the pair.

They were a big part of keeping Devin Booker down in this game, which should be mentioned. I don’t know if I can recall the last bad Booker game against Philadelphia, but Oubre and Martin were in his grill all night, forcing off-angle shots and tough misses from one of the league’s toughest covers. You earn a lot of goodwill from this guy when you get out there and defend.

But still, yuck on offense.

The Ugly

— I don’t have a lot of tolerance for turnovers from role players, who are on the floor to execute in fairly narrow roles. Shoot the ball, dribble once or twice, or get rid of it. Andre Drummond managed to turn the ball over not once, not twice, not three times, but four times in the first 6.5 minutes of this game. And only one of those came on a forgivable play (a travel), with the rest produced by brain-melting giveaways that you’d bench a player for in most levels of basketball. These were unforced turnovers that he simply gifted to the Suns, and they were the turd in the proverbial punch bowl during a fun first half of basketball.

Here’s the bad news: his head-in-the-clouds gaffes did not stop after halftime. Drummond botched a basic handoff with Maxey for a Beal run out, and he was remarkably overzealous as a rim attacker, with a couple of wild layup attempts flying off of the rim at warp speed. The Suns must have been ecstatic every minute he was on the floor because he was liable to gift them a runout in some form or fashion.

The larger problems are on the defensive end, where Drummond simply isn’t performing well enough at his job. He has been constantly stuck between worlds so far, not quick enough to get out for closeouts and too indecisive inside the arc to reliably contest shots at the rim. A more cynical person would say he’s too busy trying to set himself up for rebounding opportunities, but I don’t even think he’s done well on that front, so it just seems like a lack of positional sense at the position where that matters most.

It’s getting harder to blame his issues on how much he’s playing — Yabusele played more minutes than Drummond in the first half on Monday, and the Sixers were decisively better with the smaller guy on the floor. Some of that comes down to the improved spacing, but you can also point to multiple good plays at the rim for Yabusele and none for the larger man on defense. Opinions may vary, but Drummond has been a major disappointment for me so far.