Welcome to the first edition of Friday film of the 2025-26 Sixers regular season. You should be able to guess the focuses of this one.
On Wednesday night the Sixers traveled to Boston, withstood a nightmarish 20-minute showing from Joel Embiid and a dreadful third quarter, completed a comeback and beat the Celtics, 117-116, on the backs of historic showings from Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe.
No game is more instructive during an NBA season than the very first one, when rotations and schematic changes are finally on full display with no subtlety. For the Sixers, a reliance on increased pace was evident, as was a focus on activity around the rim; the team has sorely lacked production in both of those respects for years.
From Edgecombe and Maxey's dazzling games to Embiid's struggles and everything in between, there is a whole lot to note within the tape:
VJ Edgecombe does it all
Edgecombe scored more points in an NBA debut than anybody since Wilt Chamberlain, and the third-most in the history of the league. He scored 34 in all, and with 14 points in the first quarter Edgecombe broke a record previously held by LeBron James for most points scored in the first quarter of an NBA game. He also grabbed seven rebounds, including a few critical ones, and brought the sort of competitive fire this organization desperately needs.
For weeks, the Sixers have been optimistic about how Edgecombe could thrive as a transition scorer. It can provide him with a healthy offensive floor given his perceived limitations as a three-point shooter and ball-handler, and his blazing end-to-end speed helped net him three easy baskets:
Edgecombe's athleticism was also on display on the glass, where he has the chance to be a legitimate difference-maker as a guard. The following two boards stood out: on the first play, he soars in for a rebound and makes a perfect pass to kickstart a transition possession; on the second one he asserts his will on the game in a massive spot:
The story of training camp and preseason was Edgecombe's flashes of stardom as a ball-handler, and he had immense confidence going up against Derrick White, a player Edgecombe himself tabbed as one of the game's elite defenders a handful of days prior. His change of pace was remarkable on this play, as he uses a hesitation move to gain a step on Neemias Queta, draws a defender into the paint and makes a crisp, one-handed pass on the move that ends up being a hockey assist:
And, finally, here are all 13 of Edgecombe's baskets in his first NBA game.
Tyrese Maxey's ridiculous shot-making
Maxey's 40-piece is a lot easier to digest: he made a ton of incredible shots. Maxey remains one of the league's most gifted and versatile shooters, and his 7-for-9 line on long-range attempts Wednesday was even more impressive on film than on paper:
Maxey is not going to shoot this well every night, but he can carry his aggression from beyond the arc into each and every game. It will set the table for his in-between game and do the Sixers many favors on offense.
Joel Embiid's immobility
The elephant in the room in all of this is that Embiid did not look capable of moving at the requisite speed to compete in the NBA. He was a decoy on offense, and even that only did the Sixers any good once or twice. What was more concerning was the way the Sixers hemorrhaged points defensively at a few stages of the game because Embiid's complete immobility, combined with some poor communication, handed the Celtics easy shots. After Boston bailed out a few of the Sixers' defensive breakdowns by missing open threes in the first half, they torched an Embiid-centric defense early in the fourth quarter:
Embiid was not moving as well as he did during his peak days in his lone preseason appearance last week, but he moved a whole lot better in that game than he did on Wednesday. If this is his new norm, the Sixers have an enormous issue on their hands, but head coach Nick Nurse's willingness to pull the plug on Embiid's minutes won his team the game.
Dominick Barlow and others crash the offensive glass
Another decision from Nurse that swung the game: starting two-way signee Dominick Barlow at power forward next to Embiid. For weeks, Nurse and various Sixers players have sung the praises of the 22-year-old Barlow for his offensive rebounding and activity level. Absolutely everything they described seeing from him in practices translated to the preseason and then to Wednesday's opener.
Barlow grabbed five offensive rebounds on Wednesday, and all five of them led directly to scoring. It is rare to be able to draw such a straight line between process and result, but the Sixers would not have won Wednesday if Barlow did not keep them afloat with his persistence:
Crashing the offensive glass and reviving possessions is clearly a new organizational focus, and after a disastrous season in which the Sixers rarely could match opposing teams' muscle and effort inside, Barlow leads a group of frontcourt role players capable of overwhelming the opposition. Fellow two-way signee Jabari Walker scored both of his baskets after grabbing offensive rebounds: Adem Bona did not even register a shot attempt in his 15 minutes of action. But the Sixers' energetic backup center has a motor that never stops, and twice his sheer determination generated the Sixers additional shots and ensuing points:
The Sixers have spent much of Embiid's career focused on surrounding him with three-point shooting, looking to maximize their floor spacing and Embiid's offensive freedom. Now, the priority has clearly shifted in the direction of physicality and activity inside, which should be valuable in terms of lightening Embiid's workload.
Odds and ends
Some more individual plays, sequences and trends that stood out on Wednesday:
• Quentin Grimes did not play all that well for much of the game, very much taking a backseat as Edgecombe and Maxey traded heaters. But his combination of defensive versatility and three-point shooting should force him into a major role, regardless of whether he starts or comes off the bench. Down the stretch of the game, the 25-year-old guard made a handful of critical plays across both ends of the floor that helped the Sixers complete their comeback:
Grimes played nearly 32 minutes as a reserve on Wednesday. That number could go up, even if he does not enter the starting lineup at any point. There is a compelling case to be made that he should start next to Maxey and Edgecombe.That would send Kelly Oubre Jr. to the bench, and while Oubre did not play all that well he did put the Sixers ahead with a clutch corner triple with a minute and change left, immediately drawing an offensive foul on the next possession. Nurse closing with Oubre over Walker ended up being the right call.
• Boston started this game small, with two guards, two wings and one big on the floor. Barlow was forced to defend star wing Jaylen Brown, and it did not go well. Brown's deceleration had Barlow on skates multiple times, and while Barlow has excellent athleticism he is just not going to be optimized as a perimeter defender:
To give Barlow credit where it is due, he has shown impressive balance defending smaller guards on switches at a few different points since the preseason began. He forced Payton Pritchard into a travel late in the first half on Wednesday:
• Even when Embiid has been at his worst in his career, he has created so many opportunities for his teammates just because the opposing defense always has 10 eyes focused on his every move. But if Embiid looks as limited as a scorer moving forward as he did against Boston, that attention will dissipate. Embiid and the Sixers leveraging his scoring ability very rarely benefitted them in this game. A two-man action between Maxey and Embiid creating a wide-open corner three-point attempt for Grimes was a decent sign:
Embiid being used as a decoy on offense sounds easy enough in theory. But in order for him to be an effective decoy, he must be a credible threat to score. He was not that on Wednesday.
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