Instant observations: Sixers squeak out win over tanking Jazz

The Sixers needed every bit of 48 minutes to earn a 106-102 win over the Utah Jazz, using a 22-point night for Jabari Walker off the bench to avoid disaster. Tyrese Maxey scored a team-leading 25 points on 8/22 shooting, and we will all try to forget this game by the morning.

Here’s what I saw.

A win in name only

I was much happier with Tyrese Maxey’s start to this game than the disasterclass that was Tuesday’s loss to San Antonio. It did not require him to go bonkers as a scorer or try to strongarm his way through repeated traps and doubles, but showed a nice balance of scoring and playmaking that has been missing from his game in a lot of recent battles.

Maxey’s decision-making as a passer was excellent against Utah, with No. 0 absorbing a lot of pressure in the middle of the floor before kicking passes out to the corners, predominantly to his right side. He did well to wait until the last possible moment without having to make difficult mid-air passes, hitting everyone from Quentin Grimes to Justin Edwards to Jabari Walker right in the shooting pocket.

It wasn’t the cleanest offensive outing otherwise, with Maxey 2/6 from beyond the arc at halftime and settling for the deep pull-up threes in early offense that Nick Nurse recently mentioned he wanted to see more of. I think those shots were plenty justified, though, given how aggressive the Jazz were about trying to get the ball out of his hands. With Utah trying to force the ball out of his hands to make Grimes, Watford, and others make decisions, Maxey was often forced to choose between an early jumper or never touching the ball again. In lineups with three non-shooters, I will take the former almost every time.

And yet, when the third quarter arrived, the Sixers were not far enough in front to stave off the inevitable, dreadful start to their nightmare quarter. Turns out, when you start a lineup with 1.5 shooters and lean on them for a lot of the game, offense is going to be hard to come by. I am sympathetic to Nurse’s plight in a game like this, but rocking with Watford/Barlow/Bona at the 3-5 spots is just begging for zone from the other team, and that’s exactly what the Sixers saw from Utah. The Jazz toggled between a more straightforward 2-3 zone and something closer to a matchup zone with man-to-man flexibility, and Philadelphia dealt poorly with all of it.

Even when the Sixers executed well against zone, you had to question whether they were harming themselves in the math battle. With Trendon Watford and Dominick Barlow often quarterbacking in the middle of the zone, the Sixers weren’t generating many threes against a defense that concedes those shots by design, settling for short midrange shots and quick post moves as the Jazz got up and made more threes on the other end. The teams were neck and neck in attempts from downtown for most of the night, but Philadelphia’s pace from deep slowed considerably at a moment when it should have exploded.

What was initially a patient and poised performance turned into a passive night for Maxey, who often got off the ball quickly and never found his way back to it in the second half. He missed several makable threes in the third and fourth quarters, and wasn’t able to slash enough to make up for it inside the arc.

Inevitably, poor offense led to everyone having to watch Philadelphia’s horrific transition defense, which has not gotten any better since they returned from the All-Star break. The Jazz were able to overcome their shorthanded roster and poor half-court offense by running on turnovers and misses, and the Sixers were happy to let them run past and through them on far too many possessions. Cody Williams was fouled on one third-quarter runout after meeting zero resistance with three or four Sixers back to make a play, the whole team failing to check the “stop man at the free-throw line” box that coaches teach middle school basketball players.

I keep coming back to systemic failures for the Sixers on both ends of the floor. Why are they completely unable to fix transition defense or rebounding woes, even against small or undermanned teams? Why haven’t they figured out how to help Maxey out when he gets doubled? Why are they still overhelping and conceding open corner threes to guys who can’t do much more than make corner threes? Why the hell is Kyle Lowry, a glorified coach and Amazon Prime analyst, playing in a real game in 2026. And none of that, of course, absolves Tyrese Maxey for simply not playing well enough to put this away earlier. He had Ace Bailey on an island with a chance to take the lead with a minute and change to play, and Maxey committed an awful turnover that the Jazz took the other way for the lead.

So yes, they eventually squeaked out a win because Quentin Grimes — who committed a damn near impossible turnover in a 3 v 1 late in the game — somehow found a way to dig out buckets in the final minute. It was a good game on paper for Grimes, 18 points on 7/12 shooting that helped them get this over the line. The Sixers also turned the water off on the Jazz in crunch time, which they deserve some credit for. But they shouldn’t feel very good about it, and they badly need Joel Embiid and the other reinforcements ASAP.

A couple of bright spots

You have to admire Jabari Walker’s resolve after he spent part of his season toiling on the bench through no fault of his own. Stuck in two-way contract jail as the Sixers waited to convert his contract, all Walker could do was practice and wait, hoping he’d get another chance with a team he’d helped all year.

Back in the rotation on Wednesday after a strong second half against San Antonio, Walker bombed away against the Jazz, knocking down four consecutive threes to open his night before finishing a fifth basket at the basket for a clean 15 points on 5/5 shooting. It was nothing but a steady diet of corner threes, and Walker has not been very shy about letting it go as a shooter in that spot, even when the results haven’t been there.

Walker felt like the only player on the Sixers interested in trying to win the game at times on Wednesday, with other players merely drifting through the night as the young Jazz tried to steal a rare win. He was active on the offensive glass, cleaning up some missed jumpers from the guards for second-chance buckets at the rim. Walker finished with a brilliant 22 points and 10 rebounds in what can only be described as a game-saving performance.

Two-way guard Tyrese Martin was the other bright spot, if a dim one, on a night when he got his first chance at real rotation minutes. He hit a couple of threes in the fourth quarter and had nice drive-and-drop moments going downhill, though he clearly needs some time to find chemistry with his teammates, as he showed on a brutal fourth-quarter turnover trying to find Tyrese Maxey. The Sixers are starved for guys who can dribble and make good decisions, and Martin looks like a decent candidate.

Other notes

— Cam Payne and Kyle Lowry combined to go 0/4 with one assist in the first half of Wednesday’s game for a cool -6. Give me more wings or give me death.

— I don’t want to overstate this, but seeing Adem Bona start over Andre Drummond after the latter’s disastrous outing vs. the Spurs made me feel like there is justice in the universe. Maybe life really is worth living. Maybe there’s a higher power out there watching over us all. Maybe actions really do have consequences, even if they evade people working in important offices around America and the world. Where was I going with this, again?

Unfortunately, Drummond still managed to get on the floor for backup minutes, and he managed to get outplayed by Mo Bamba during an important stretch at the tail end of the third quarter.