It was only the first quarter of the 13th game of the Sixers’ season, so there seemed to be no cause for alarm (and never mind the booing). Still, they were down 17 to a Toronto team on the second half of a back-to-back and playing without its two best players. There was at least the possibility Thursday that it was one of those nights every NBA team has on occasion, where the mood and the energy and the desire are just … off.
It would be easy to reach that conclusion, after Boston smacked the Sixers
around Tuesday, in what was supposed to be the Jaylen Brown Revenge Game. Also,LeBron James sat out against the Raptors. The official reason was “low back/sciatica management,” though this seems comparable to that time years ago when the Spurs rested Tim Duncan and listed him this way in the boxscore: “DNP-OLD.”
When Nick Nurse called timeout with 2:40 left in the first and his team down 32-16, he said he was thinking in the simplest terms.
“I just want the players to play well,” he said, adding that everyone seemed to be searching for a rhythm, or seeking to “shake something off from the last game or whatever,” as he put it.
They fell 17 back moments later, but soon found their inspiration, soon manufactured their own energy. ReservesAnfernee Simons and Jabari Walker found it by looking back to their time on some wretched Portland teams. VJ Edgecombe found it by looking forward to a potential spot in the NBA slam-dunk contest.
And Tyrese Maxey found it by looking over to the sideline, to his infant daughter.
The end result was a 123-112 Sixers victory over the Scottie Barnes– andKawhi Leonard-less Raptors. Maxey scored 27, and Joel Embiid, who limped off in the first quarter after bumping knees with a Raptor, returned and finished with 20. Edgecombe enjoyed a Swiss Army Knife kinda night – 15 points, eight rebounds, eight assists, three steals and a block – and the bench brigade of Simons, Walker andKentavious Caldwell-Pope contributed 37 points, including 9-for-12 three-point sniping.
“You learn once you’re coming off the bench to kind of read the game before you get in there,” Simons said after going 5-for-6 from the arc and scoring 17.
What he read before checking in at the aforementioned timeout was straight out of the Stephen King collection. So the idea, Simons said, was to “bring some energy and some life to the team.”
He provided the night’s first thunderbolt, nailing a three-ball at the first-period buzzer to cut the deficit to nine.
“Those are big momentum plays,” Nurse said, “that usually have some weight to them and carry you into the next moment.”
From that point forward, the Sixers, now 10-3, seemed inevitable. Edgecombe turned a second-quarter steal into a breakaway slam. Maxey threw an alley-oop to Brown from midcourt for a bucket late in the third, when Philadelphia went ahead for good. And with the Raptors hanging around late in the fourth, Simons and Caldwell-Pope (11 points) connected from three to put it away.
Re Simons: Now in his ninth NBA season, he is playing for his fourth team. He has been productive everywhere he’s been, but this year his minutes (21.7) and points (10.2) are down from their usual levels. He says he doesn’t care – not after playing on losing teams five of the seven seasons he spent in Portland, his first stop. The Blazers were 33-49, 21-61 and 36-46 the last three of those seasons, when Walker was a teammate. (Another Sixer, Rayan Rupert, was on two of those teams.)
“You learn a lot in those situations about yourself, the people around you, your teammates,” Simons said, adding that “you feel appreciative of the times where you go into a situation where your role might be a little bit less, but you’re winning. And so that’s something that you can’t take for granted for sure, because it’s hard to win in the NBA.”
Sometimes it’s hard to even get on the court, as Walker has learned. He is averaging 15 minutes a game over five seasons, but now looms as the best option to back up Embiid at center, despite standing 6-7. Not to worry, he said after contributing nine points and eight boards in just under 16 minutes Thursday; his dad, Samaki, had been a small-ball center himself while playing a decade in the Association. The younger Walker knows the assignment, knows what the job entails.
He’s also healthy this season, having undergone offseason knee surgery. And while it wasn’t clear where he might fit in the pecking order after the Sixers revamped their roster over the summer, he had high hopes.
“I don’t know if I was delusional,” he said, “but I always felt like I was going to play and I was going to be a part. I read some things, and they say it’s a surprise. But if you were around me this summer and saw the mindset I had, then it wouldn’t be a surprise. So this is expected, and I just want to continue to get better.”
There were also questions about Edgecombe’s role coming into the season. But his attitude is always exemplary, his approach relentless. Informed after Thursday’s game that the only guard in the league with more dunks than him was Houston’s Amen Thompson, he scoffed.
“Man, he don’t even count,” Edgecombe said.
He might have a point. Thompson stands 6-7. Edgecombe is listed at 6-4, but attacks the rim so regularly that he is musing about the dunk contest on All-Star Weekend, February in Phoenix.
“Obviously I don’t want to sit here and give a yes, and I don’t want to give a no,” he said. “But that’s something I’m thinking about, for sure.”
Maxey couldn’t help but think about his daughter Marvel. Born May 14 to Tyrese and his girlfriend Myra Gordon, she attended her first game with her mom Thursday – “a really cool moment,” as Maxey said.
She might not be back for a while, though.
“It’s too late,” he said. “She was yawning and doing a whole bunch of stuff.”
So too were the Sixers for a while. They awakened from their slumber. They found their footing, manufactured their own energy. On many, many nights across the long season, that’s how it has to be.
