Oct 23, 2024; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia 76ers guard Tyrese Maxey (0) reacts to his three pointer against the Milwaukee Bucks during the first quarter at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-Imagn Images

Oct 23, 2024; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia 76ers guard Tyrese Maxey (0) reacts to his three pointer against the Milwaukee Bucks during the first quarter at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-Imagn Images

“It’s a line drive in the box score, and it’s a W. So we’ll take it.”

That’s about all the happiness Sixers coach Nick Nurse could muster after his team’s come-from-behind 113-111 win over the lowly Sacramento Kings at Xfinity Mobile Arena on Thursday. The win improved the Sixers to 26-21, gave them their first home winning streak since the beginning of December, and left a whole lot of questions as to how this team may move forward during the course of the final 35 games of the season.

Let’s break it down a few different ways because, yes, a win is a win, and there have to be positives in that. So let’s take a look at those first.

The Sixers rolled out their starting lineup of Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe, Joel Embiid, Paul George and Kelly Oubre, Jr. for the second game in a row. Come hell or high water, or a blockbuster move at the trade deadline, that is going to be Nurse’s lineup for the rest of the season and into the playoff run. Each of those five played more than 35 minutes on Thursday and, at least offensively, you could see the cohesion continue to grow.

The Big Three of Embiid (37), Maxey (40) and George (15) scored 92 of the team’s points, or 81 percent of their total. And when the team trailed by eight with 8:13 left in the game at 100-92, Maxey and Embiid came off the bench to score the final 21 points of the game and secure the win. Great players do great things, and that’s what they did to pull out this one, which was secured when Maxey hit a driving layup off a terrific side out of bounds play with 1.3 seconds to play on a feed from Embiid,

“We did a good job. We played kind of resilient and we had to go in there and make a run quick, and we did that,” said Maxey, who also had eight assists and shot 12-for-18 from the field. “I feel like sometimes you have to be lucky. It happens. There’s 82 games in a season. We didn’t play great, by no stretch of the imagination, but we’re going to take the W. I’d rather win the game and learn lessons after than lose it.”

As dominant as he and Embiid were offensively, Maxey knew when the two came back in the game trailing by eight in the fourth what needed to be done. 

“Get some stops,” Maxey said. “If we get some stops we had a chance. We’d been scoring pretty well, when myself and Joel were in the game, we pretty much get what we want. Kyle (Lowry) told us, ‘All games aren’t pretty, but you all are the two best players on the floor. Go out there and win the game for us.’ I think we did that.”

They did a wonderful job of doubling Kings star DeMar DeRozan (25 points) and making others try to hurt them. DeRozan didn’t get a point in that fourth quarter.

“We did one, two little adjustments on matchups and stuff,” said Nurse. “That seemed to work pretty good. We made a couple schematic changes. There were kind of a couple possessions, kind of strikeout or home runs, and we got a couple of home runs, knocked the ball away, knocked it out of bounds. Seemed better to get us moving around. Just try to make them make a few more passes out of some duress.”

And after that, it was time to perfectly execute the side out of bounds play where Oubre, Jr. threw the ball into Embiid in the front court. Maxey, who was denied in the backcourt, beat his man racing to the basket and got a great feed from Embiid. Maxey deposited a layup to give the team the 113-111 lead before purposely missing the ensuing and-one foul shot.

“Sometimes it’s like that. You buckle down in the fourth quarter and you win the game,” said Maxey. “That’s really an improvement for us, honestly. There’s been times where we just let the games slip out of our hands and we just lose it and you don’t feel good. As bad as it was in the third and early fourth, for us to be resilient, buckle down and get stops and win the game like that, I was proud of us.”

On the other side, what wasn’t gratifying was the team getting crushed again on the boards, to the tune of a 46-24 advantage for the Kings. Another third quarter lull by the Sixers saw them be outscored by 38-28 during that frame, They also only got 21 points from other players not named Maxey, Embiid or George.

“It’s the small things with us,” said Maxey. “Fouling sometimes when we don’t need to foul, or gambling when we don’t need to gamble, or running our plays and not getting what we want to do. That’s the biggest thing for us. We have the talent, I feel like, and I feel like we have the motivation with this group and we’re pretty resilient, too. We’ve got the fight. We’re willing to get our hands dirty and go out there and mix it up with people. We have a lot of talented guys and our depth is pretty good. 

“We’ve just got to get better at small things, pay attention to detail. Shootarounds, got to be locked in at shootarounds. If we’re going to be at practices, we might as well be locked in. Pay attention to details, game-planning, can’t have any game-planning mistakes. Every possession matters.”

Now they just have to prove that for the remaining games.