CAMDEN, N.J. – A whole lot of smiles flashed in the aftermath of the Sixers' practice on Thursday morning. And, to be fair, there is a whole lot to smile about right now.
The Sixers are 4-0, and in just a week and change, they have gone from one of the NBA's laughingstocks nationally to an exciting story. It is hard to find a major media outlet that has not yet interviewed burgeoning backcourt Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe.
On Tuesday night in the nation's capital, the Sixers staged the most dramatic of their three late-game comebacks, erasing a 19-point Washington Wizards lead that was still at 13 inside of the five-minute mark, forcing overtime and then mounting another comeback effort in the extra five minutes.
Many heroes emerged on Tuesday, and the Sixers will need more of that as they kick off their 2025 NBA Cup Group Play schedule on Friday night against the Boston Celtics. In this week's Friday film, a breakdown of the key figures in the Sixers' fourth win of the season:
Tyrese Maxey's onslaught continues
Nine days into the 2025-26 NBA season, no player can definitively claim they have been a better scorer than Maxey. His 37.5 points per game through four contests is absurd, obviously, and so is the seamless nature with which he has taken on an enormous burden.
Maxey had a stellar opening burst on Tuesday, then struggled a bit for the first time all season. But when the Sixers began making a late push, it was Maxey who led the way with his scoring. Maxey finished with 39 points, and his 16 attempts at the free throw line were a career-high. He was marvelous at all three levels:
Maxey also had 10 assists in Washington, and two of them were particularly impressive:
There are few words that can properly explain how well Maxey is playing. It is superstar-caliber production and, as Adem Bona put it on Thursday, Maxey is clearly playing with a "killer instinct."
Maxey naturally plays at a breathtaking speed because he is breathtakingly fast, but his decisions have also become considerably quicker. He is playing with so much more conviction right now and it is clearly rubbing off on his teammates. Confidence can be contagious, and Maxey is spreading it in spades.
It will be productive for the Sixers to eventually lighten Maxey's workload just a bit; eventual returns for Jared McCain and Paul George plus Joel Embiid's minutes restriction should make it easier for head coach Nick Nurse to reduce Maxey's minutes total a bit.
MORE: How will the Sixers look when George and McCain return?
Joel Embiid finds himself, with a new frontcourt partner
Embiid's defense remains a significant work in progress due to his limited mobility. But he went from the usual 20 minutes to 23 minutes on Tuesday, and his overall offensive performance was the best it has been in any game this season. He scored 25 efficient points and collected five assists:
Embiid's three-point shooting has been a priority early on this season, and he began the second quarter by knocking down a pick-and-pop triple off an assist from Trendon Watford. Watford logged 18 minutes in his Sixers debut and had a modest line in the box score, but his playmaking and ball-handling chops as a 6-foot-9 power forward stood out. A few Watford highlights, including the assist to Embiid:
So, how much experience did Watford have playing alongside the former NBA MVP entering that quarter-opening play?
"That was it," Watford said Thursday. "That was my first pick-and-roll running with Jo, and it turned out to be a catch-and-shoot three with him that was cash... I hadn't had any reps with any other guys. So I've really just been picturing myself in the games with him... It's just going to keep getting better. I'm going to keep getting better and just trying to get more comfortable with everything."
Quentin Grimes' amazing closing effort
For a player with everything to gain (or lose) in an individual capacity this season, the 25-year-old Grimes is playing some remarkable team-oriented basketball. After emerging as a dynamic three-level scorer last season, he has casually slid into a sixth man role where he is often playing off the ball but can occasionally take over a possession. With the energy that would have gone toward scoring, Grimes has played maniacal defense.
In the fourth quarter and overtime on Tuesday, no player in the game was better on both ends of the floor than Grimes. He scored five times during the comeback in the final frame and was absolutely everywhere defensively:
Grimes is up to 31.6 minutes per game off the bench, and even if Nurse wants to stick with a traditional two-guard starting lineup, Grimes must continue to play the "starter minutes" Nurse has bestowed upon him to date. Of course, McCain and George returning will suddenly mean four of the six best players on the team are guards and another is also perimeter-oriented, but it is a puzzle Nurse must figure out without letting Grimes slip through the cracks.
VJ Edgecombe finds another way
Edgecombe's first three NBA games were filled with jaw-dropping on-ball flashes; what was believed to be the 20-year-old's weakness entering the NBA suddenly looks like a clear strength on top of his defensive intensity, transition scoring and ridiculous athleticism.
Finally, on Tuesday there were just about zero instances in which Edgecombe did anything electrifying with the ball in his hands. He did not even attempt a shot until the final minute of the first half. And yet, he still found a way to have an impactful game.
Edgecombe's productivity came via his three-point shooting on Tuesday. It is another area in which he was believed not to be advanced. Edgecombe knocked down four triples against the Wizards, and two of them turned into four-point plays:
Ultimately, what stood out about Edgecombe's night was that for the first time he was not in the spotlight, and he did not do any pressing. He just took shots that came within the flow of the offense because Maxey and Embiid had such stellar nights and found other ways to drive winning. It is abnormal for someone so young and inexperienced.
"I'm sort of just surprised with how mature he's playing," Watford said. "He doesn't really look like a 20-year-old rookie coming out of college. His poise, his maturity, how he carries himself in the game – you wouldn't even know he was a rookie if you don't know him... That's the kind of person he is."
Adem Bona blocks everything
Last but most certainly not least is Bona, whose minutes in the first half of this game were so unproductive that Andre Drummond played over him in the third quarter. But when Embiid hit his minutes limit, Nurse went to the second-year center Bona in hopes of finding a spark with rim protection. Bona swatted five shots in all, and there were a few more plays in which he clearly deterred a Wizards driver.
It was a career-best moment for the No. 41 overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft, and the complete explosion of excitement from his teammates as he continued dominating told a story in itself. But before swatting his fifth and final shot, Bona gave the Sixers the lead with his only basket of the game, a put-back slam off a Maxey drive and miss:
Bona was beaming on Thursday as he discussed his tremendous performance with the media. He just wanted one thing to have gone differently.
"I wished it was in Xfinity [Mobile Arena]," Bona said, "because I knew how the whole arena would have erupted."
THE SIXERS ARE 4-0 (INSTANT OBSERVATIONS)
Sixers 117, Celtics 116 | Hornets 121, Sixers 125
Magic 124, Sixers 136 | Sixers 139, Wizards 134 (OT)
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