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The Sixers got back to their winning ways in a Saturday night win over the Suns, scoring a 109-103 victory by outlasting Phoenix down the stretch.
Here’s what I saw.
Staggering works!
I have tried to be one of the loudest advocates for purposeful lineup staggering in Philadelphia all season, because it’s the most straightforward way to avoid the team falling off a cliff for minutes at a time. VJ Edgecombe is a rookie stud, but he’s not someone who can hard carry lineups yet.
Edgecombe’s foul trouble threatened to short-circuit their plans before they unfolded, but Nurse opened the second quarter with Maxey as the offensive catalyst for a bench-heavy group. After starting the game shooting poorly from deep — he had a three-pointer clear the rim and fall harmlessly off the backboard, yuck! — Maxey got a lot more involved as an inside-the-arc scorer, using baseline turnarounds, runners, and speed drives to build a bit of momentum. With the Suns forced to converge on Maxey in the middle of the floor, passing lanes opened up, too. Maxey hit a beautiful outlet pass to a streaking Quentin Grimes in the middle of a huge Sixers run, with Grimes finishing a layup plus the harm to the delight of his teammates.
It felt like a much more balanced approach than what we saw in the Lakers game, which was a lot of stepback jumpers in fear of the Lakers selling out at the rim. Even when teams load up against him in the paint, his efforts to get there open up better shots for the likes of Kelly Oubre, Quentin Grimes, VJ Edgecombe, and others, and Maxey did a better job of hunting looks from all three levels against Phoenix.
Specifically, Maxey did an awesome job of working the midrange turnaround, seizing a rare opportunity to play “bully ball” with some post fades over Collin Gillespie. The shot he hit early in the fourth quarter felt like the beginning of the end for Phoenix, with Maxey forcing a Suns timeout and the lead swelling to 14 points.
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In those backup-heavy groups, he was helped by resurgent performances from a few players. Adem Bona’s rebounding issues have plagued the non-Embiid minutes all year, but I thought he had two of his best defensive rebounds of the season against Phoenix. He snared one with a single hand in traffic, clutching it to his midsection before forcing a Suns foul from the middle of three bodies. Later, he ended a defensive possession by attacking the ball above the rim with two hands, leveraging his athleticism instead of standing flat-footed and hoping the ball would fall in his direction.
Kelly Oubre also had a nice bounce-back outing for the Sixers after what I thought was a brutal two-way effort against the Lakers on Thursday. His defensive energy and attentiveness were both much better in Phoenix, but it was his reliable shooting that juiced a lot of Sixers lineups vs. the Suns. The Sixers even made efforts to create extra space for Oubre on corner threes, using Barlow as a screener out of the dunker spot on several occasions. Even when Oubre missed those, Barlow’s contact on an attempted closeout opened space for some offensive rebounding opportunities, which the Sixers (and Barlow!) took advantage of.
(Actually, forget everything I said, he committed two of the dumbest fouls I’ve ever seen in the final minute, send him to turbo jail.)
Meanwhile, this wasn’t the “best” game that Joel Embiid has played in 2025-26, but it may have been the most well-rounded effort we’ve seen from Embiid this season. It had a little bit of everything, from three-point shooting to chasedown blocks to some bully ball around the basket. Nick Nurse uses Embiid’s willingness to drive as a gauge of how the big man is feeling, but I look at two specific things: early duck-ins and the glass. I think when you see Embiid contributing to one or both of those areas, you’re probably getting a good version of the big guy. Against Phoenix, we saw both, with Embiid getting early work done on offense and ending possessions on defense.
Although Embiid remains a little too slow to assess trouble coming from the weak side, I think he has proven a much more willing passer from the middle of the floor this season, focusing on moving it away from pressure instead of dragging the shot clock out to play face-up. It’s a theme that Tyrese Maxey has talked about a lot, and we’ve seen it emerge as teams try all different types of coverages against Embiid. The Suns tried to use Dillon Brooks on Embiid with Mark Williams lingering in the paint near Dom Barlow in the second half, and Embiid struck a nice balance of drawing fouls from contact and passing out of doubles to spread the wealth around.
It’s also nice, of course, for Embiid to simply rise up and shoot over smaller defenders when teams try this coverage. In the guts of the game, Embiid hit some big jumpers with Brooks draped all over him, able to do nothing to bother the shot aside from praying to the basketball gods.
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But I cannot overstate how much of a difference it makes to always have one of Embiid or Maxey on the floor at all times. Having a premium scoring option to play through/around is the name of the game, and the Sixers beat the Suns with neither star playing an A+ game. They actively tried to give Phoenix a chance in the final minute, and couldn’t give it away because they won the non-Embiid minutes handily by playing through Maxey. Imagine that!
Watford is figuring it out
— It was more than fair for Sixers fans to wonder whether trading Jared McCain would leave them short on guard options, given that the assumed next man up for backcourt minutes was Coach Lowry at the end of the bench. But given his recent usage and some more sub patterns we saw vs. Phoenix, it seems Nick Nurse views Trendon Watford as another option to run the show as a jumbo point guard. Even that designation feels like it sells Watford short, though, and the Sixers are beginning to tap into the uniqueness of Watford’s skill set.
On Saturday, Watford’s first-half run appeared to be over before VJ Edgecombe found himself in foul trouble, with Nurse choosing to leave Maxey on the bench for rest, subbing Watford in for Edgecombe directly. Paired more often with Joel Embiid in recent games, Watford has been able to play both sides of the pick-and-roll, serving as both the initiator and the screener in actions with their star big. Thanks to his time with Ben Simmons, Embiid has a lot of reps with a big initiator who can flip to either side of the action, and they have executed some nice combination passes over the last two games, finally tapping into Watford’s creative talents.
Watford as a short-roll player is more idea than a proven concept at this point, but there’s no reason someone of his ilk can’t make an impact there, and I am much more interested in that than him running the offense. He hit a gorgeous drop off to a cutting Dominick Barlow late in the second quarter, ready to celebrate the and-one finish with his buddy before Barlow had even finished the play off.
He also hit arguably the biggest shot of the game, a late-clock three on a baseline out-of-bounds play that held the Suns off during a run in the final minutes. At least, that’s what we thought, until the officials wiped it away several minutes later. In any case, let it fly!
While I have my reservations about Watford, the Sixers are in desperate need of creativity with Paul George out of the lineup, and this is a terrific time to bring Watford along and learn more about his game. And when he contributes help on the glass the way he did on Saturday, even better.
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Other notes
— The officiating in this game, and the officiating for most of the games this week, was absolutely horrific. They offered an explanation I have quite literally never heard before on an unsuccessful Sixers challenge in the fourth quarter, wiping out a potential and-one for Quentin Grimes.
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