Sixers blow out shorthanded Nets behind Joel Embiid, Caleb Martin

The Sixers made quick work of the shorthanded Brooklyn Nets, coasting to a 123-94 victory over their Atlantic Division neighbors.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— Joel Embiid opened Saturday’s game with a fairly unnecessary technical foul after a tie-up near his team’s basket. He seemed incredulous at the idea that he’d done anything wrong after riding a much smaller player well past the whistle, and for a moment, you could only shake your head that he wouldn’t let the play go.

It appears that keeping the intensity high worked in his favor. After the tech, Embiid got right to work dismantling Brooklyn in the middle of the floor. They are ill-equipped to slow him down on their best and healthiest day, and this wasn’t one of those. Embiid just threw smaller Nets bigs out of his way en route to an efficient, dominant night at the office, using deep post touches and wide-open lanes on pick-and-rolls to help his team pull away from Brooklyn.

No need to wax poetic about stats and specifics against this sad sack Nets team, but it is always refreshing when the best player comes out and takes a bad opponent seriously so they don’t have to screw around and play meaningful minutes in crunch time for no reason. Whether it was Nic Claxton, Noah Clowney, Day’Ron Sharpe, or a combination of Nets players in the middle of the floor, Embiid just burrowed through them and constantly ended up at the rim with little in the way to stop him.

If we’re looking for things that may actually be meaningful from a game against a terrible Nets team, Embiid’s rebounding has perked up this week. The big man came down with nine rebounds before halftime on Saturday after putting together a good rebounding effort against the Warriors on Thursday, and he has generally exerted more force and positioned himself better on opponent misses. I do think it helps when you give him a real frontcourt partner rather than playing a miniature backcourt that includes Kyle Lowry, but he is so big that he should be able to erase a lot of glass issues by himself with proper focus and approach.

— I had relatively high expectations for Caleb Martin coming into the season, but they were well short of “scoring 17 points in a half” expectations. Martin’s ability to get hot from three in big moments is something you were banking on, it’s just not the central part. Defense, secondary playmaking, and some grit would have done the trick.

Saturday, Martin was an offensive force, picking up the slack on offense with Tyrese Maxey struggling and the bench only playing okay-ish against a depleted Brooklyn outfit. He started early, hitting Philadelphia’s first three of the game after they got off to a miserable start to the game, and it was all downhill from there. His shot mechanics may be a mess when he’s lining up for a catch-and-shoot attempt, but as long as they’re going down, it’s easy to ignore the wild hitch.

(The weird thing is that Martin does have moments where he’s a comfortable shooter, particularly when he’s asked to take a quick turnaround late in the shot clock. He’s not the only guy who has ever had that particular quirk, but it doesn’t make it any less goofy.)

Martin’s intelligence off the ball has started to show up more as he grows comfortable with his new teammates, go figure. With Embiid drawing constant double teams, Martin was able to pick up an easy bucket or two sliding along the baseline.

The Sixers have three solid options to start between the stars in the group of Yabusele, Oubre, and Martin (and arguably KJ Martin if he maintains his form from December after returning to the lineup.) Good place to be for a team that seemingly didn’t have enough good players a month ago.

— Justin Edwards has gotten multiple opportunities to play over the last week, which is an eyebrow-raiser for me. If I were Ricky Council IV, I would take that as a sign that the coaching staff is looking for solutions to some bench problems that I should theoretically be helping with.

Give some credit to the rookie wing for playing solid, if unspectacular minutes on Saturday night. What jumped out at me compared to Council is that Edwards played a very calm, specified role without ever falling victim to hubris. He had an excellent half-spin move into a finish at the rim in the first half, and three made threes while operating primarily from the corners as a catch-and-shoot player.

He’s going to have to keep his hands back more and play more disciplined on that end, but nothing appears unfixable there, he’s just a typically overeager rookie. Edwards has probably earned himself more of a look with a few winnable home games on the schedule this week, and it would be prudent to give him a shot before the schedule gets brutal in the weeks to come.

— Decent, if unspectacular game from Paul George. I don’t have much more to offer there.

— Kyle Lowry was moved back to the bench, maybe there is a higher power out there.

— Good vibes from the bench in this one. Blowouts are good for the soul, or something.

The Bad

— After winning a Player of the Week award for his exploits against the Spurs and Celtics, it has been a disappointing follow-up for Tyrese Maxey this week. He had a good, if uninspiring game against the Blazers on Monday, and then a string of middling or terrible games the rest of the week. Talk about starting 2025 with a whimper.

I don’t particularly care about a point guard’s lack of scoring when Embiid and a role player or two are rolling, but I do care about the poor decision-making that has been on display from Maxey for much of this season. He just has not seen the floor well as a ballhandler, and that trend continued for stretches of the Brooklyn game. He drove into multiple Nets defenders at the rim on possessions where they’d left teammates open for fairly simple kickouts, leading to poor shots when they could have hunted good (or even great) looks. Teams are also having success sending two at him high up the floor when an immediate release valve isn’t there to help him as Embiid is during a halfcourt action.

Maxey having tunnel vision doesn’t especially matter against this hospital unit, obviously, but it would be easier to ignore if he’d had consistent success running the show this season. The good floor games have been few and far between.

Again, I must reiterate that he is far too concerned with officiating on a play-to-play basis. He was whining to refs in the middle of a play in the first half and then continued complaining to the officials after they gave him an and-one call on the very same play. Brother, if you can’t show a bit of grace after you’ve been rewarded with a correct call, why would you think you’d get one after showing them up?

His final line was okay, but that was the product of a decent third quarter when the game was already put to rest, and some more stat padding as they ran down the clock in the fourth.

The Ugly

— When Embiid was under review for a potential hostile act in the first half, Alaa Abdelnaby quipped, “I hope this is a quick review, or he’s going to see another hostile act.” Amen to that, brother.

Kate Scott also had some very funny Ben Simmons quips in the second half:

"Ben Simmons a late scratch, so not like him" @katetscott.bsky.social also called him a "great video gamer" lmao

— Kyle Neubeck (@kyleneubeck.bsky.social) January 4, 2025 at 7:42 PM