PHILADELPHIA — It had been a good long while since the Philadelphia 76ers did what they did Sunday night: Beat another NBA team actively trying to win NBA games.
Since the Feb. 26 win over Miami — also the last time that that Joel Embiid was seen on a basketball court — the 76ers had lost five basketball games to teams that want to reach the NBA playoffs and won three against teams whose next circled day on the calendar is the NBA draft lottery.
Sunday offered a fringe case. Portland sat 10th in the Western Conference at 32-35, with a precipitous fall to the team in 11th but still jockeying for playoff seeding. And in a 109-103 win, the 76ers had something to feel good about, a scarce occurrence in the six weeks since the NBA trade deadline.
It’s three wins in four for the 76ers, which isn’t yet enough to escape the clutches of the play-in. But it offers momentum for a three-game road trip that includes Denver, then two racing-to-the-bottom clubs in Sacramento and Utah.
More, it offered glimpses against a good team that thumped it by 17 points in February of the depth that may be useful once Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, Kelly Oubre and Paul George return.
“Hopefully we can kind of keep some of this stuff,” Nick Nurse said. “I kind of like some of the stuff we’re running offensively, a little more cutting and stuff. And I think that when bigs are going to plug the lane like that, we can play through our bigs a little bit.”
Certainly, 31 points from Quentin Grimes and 21 from Justin Edwards is not the plan against the elite of the Eastern Conference. But as a test of depth in a back-to-back with moribund Brooklyn and Portland, the 76ers passed.
Fresh from three games out due to back spasms, Andre Drummond controlled a matchup with 7-2 Portland center Donovan Clingan, picking up 15 rebounds and helping the Sixers win the board battle.
Grimes was aggressive from the get-go, with a season-high in points, 14 of them in the fourth quarter. Edwards followed 19 points against the Nets with 21. Of the 40-point weekend, 30 have come on shots inside the arc. VJ Edgecombe added 18 points and a career-high 12 rebounds.
In a talking point that dates to last year’s injury-blighted campaign, the 76ers have looked for difference makers in terms of style when the difference-making personnel is absent. Playing with pace and planning in the offensive half of the court beyond telling Embiid and Maxey to be generational players hasn’t always been consistent.
On Sunday, that meant 60 points in the paint to 36 for Portland.
The 76ers beat the Nets on Saturday with just three made 3-pointers, tied for the least in the NBA in a game this season for a winning team. On Sunday, they shot just 7-for-25 from 3-point range, while Portland hoisted 53 attempts, making just 17 of them (32.1 percent).
The Sixers were also savvy in the shots they took against Portland’s rim-protectors. Clingan and backup center Robert Williams blocked three shots each, but the 76ers wisely pulled up for jumpers more than challenging at the rim.
That shot distribution seems a wise acknowledgement of strengths and weaknesses with less than their best shooters in uniform.
“Usually good things happen when you hit the paint,” Grimes said. “They were in drop coverage for the majority of the game. I hit the paint, VJ hit the paint, getting all the way to the basket or kicking it out. Good things happen when you get in the paint.”
Edgecombe struggled shooting early, but it came from him getting to the spots on the floor he wanted. When Portland whittled a 14-point 76ers lead to four, Edgecombe answered with a pair of clutch makes in the final three minutes that validated the original plan.
“I know the shots I make,” he said. “I’m getting good looks. Nothing was falling. But I still kept my confidence and I still know I can miss the whole game. But at the game, I know I can make a big shot. I have that confidence in myself.”
“It can be contagious in a way, seeing how easy it is, or how fluid he’s getting to his spots,” Edwards said, of Grimes and Edgecombe. “So, it makes other guys like, ‘Hey, maybe I can get to my spot, too.’ Kudos to him, because it’s something that I look at in games.”
The perennial question facing Nurse remains the same: When everyone is back, how does Grimes’ productivity in 40 minutes condense to 18 minutes?
How can Edwards impact that game in eight minutes the way he did in 25? Sunday offered a stronger position from which to broach it.