Author: Gabriela Carroll

The Sixers overcame a 15-point deficit to win a critical game on the road in Charlotte.

Thanks to the 118-114 win, the Sixers now own the tiebreaker over Charlotte, and are tied with Atlanta for sixth in the Eastern Conference, a half game out of fifth.

Here’s what we noticed in the win:

Tyrese Maxey returns

Tyrese Maxey made his long-awaited return to the Sixers’ lineup after missing three weeks with a pinky injury on Saturday.

Last year, after Maxey hurt his pinky finger, his shooting fell off a cliff. Returning from this three-week absence, Maxey started off hot, going 6-for-8 from the field, including 3-for-4 from three, in the first half. He ended the game with 26 points, shooting 10-for-18, with seven rebounds and eight assists.

After he posterized Miles Bridges with a left-handed dunk, his teammates held up a pinky in celebration that Maxey was officially back.

Quite the offensive battle

Charlotte’s offense is potent, especially from behind the arc, but in the first half, the Sixers matched them shot for shot, with each team making 10 three-pointers. The Sixers shot 52.5% from the field in the first half compared to the Hornets’ 48%, but still were down as many as 13 points, because the Hornets created so many extra possessions.

Charlotte dominated the offensive glass, grabbing 10 rebounds for 11 second-chance points, compared to the Sixers’ three offensive rebounds and two second-chance points. By the end of the third quarter, they’d grabbed 20 offensive rebounds.

Big man Moussa Diabaté did most of the damage, grabbing seven offensive rebounds in the game. In the fourth quarter, Nurse turned to Andre Drummond at backup center in place of Adem Bona, to put a little more size in the paint. The Sixers managed to hold the Hornets to zero offensive rebounds in that final quarter, a key reason why they ultimately managed to take the lead and win the game.

The Sixers are finally healthy … mostly

Kelly Oubre Jr. returned to the lineup after missing two weeks with an elbow injury, coming in off the bench, the latest in big names coming off the injury report.

Each one of the Sixers’ biggest stars had a critical moment down the stretch — Embiid blocked a three-point attempt from Brandon Miller with under 10 seconds to play, Paul George hit the corner three that put the Sixers up for the final time, Maxey made a free throw to add to that cushion, and Edgecombe broke up a potential offensive rebound opportunity from Diabaté on the final possession on the glass.

“It just comes down to being healthy,” Maxey said Friday after practice. “I think that’s the NBA in general. A lot of teams have talent, a lot of teams have hard work and good coaching, but most of the time it comes down who’s healthy at the end.”

The Sixers never looked all that competitive in their 124-96 loss to the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday.

With the Sixers still down four starters, the Nuggets took the lead early, and led by double-digits for almost the entire game.

Here’s three things we learned from the opening game of the Sixers’ road trip:

These are still the zombie Sixers

Looking at the three games on this road trip, Denver was easily the most challenging with the players the Sixers had missing. With games against the tanking Sacramento Kings and Utah Jazz coming up on Thursday and Saturday, respectively, the Sixers can still go a respectable 2-1 on the trip and tread water in the playoff race.

Stealing a win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday, a borderline playoff team, might have given the Sixers a bit of hope that they could stay semi-competitive during this stretch. But on Tuesday, Denver dominated from wire-to-wire, just like the Pistons did when the Sixers made the trip to Detroit last week.

It’s possible that Joel Embiid could play on the road trip, coach Nick Nurse said prior to Saturday’s game against the Brooklyn Nets. He said Tuesday that Embiid was “active” during part of shootaround and went through an individual workout. Kelly Oubre Jr. will be re-evaluated at the end of the week and Tyrese Maxey a week after that. Paul George will be full-go immediately after his suspension ends next week.

Heading into Tuesday’s game, the Sixers were still just one game back of the No. 6 seed, which would allow them to bypass the play-in rounds. But the zombie Sixers still have one more tough game before George’s return: Monday’s home showdown with the Oklahoma City Thunder, which makes the next two games of the road-trip near must-wins.

Increased three-point attempts

The Sixers took 25 threes in each game of their back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday. On Tuesday, they attempted 24 threes in the first half alone. But the Sixers shot just 9-for-41 overall from beyond the arc.

In a league dominated by three-point shooting, the Sixers have struggled to replace Maxey’s three-point production, often relying on the mid-range game to score. The Nuggets, though, made 16-for-33 from three.

Down four starters, the Sixers haven’t defended well enough to stop their tougher matchups from making threes and haven’t scored enough to keep up with them. George’s 38.2% three-point percentage is the second-highest on the Sixers behind Maxey, so his expected return to the lineup against the Chicago Bulls on March 25 will help.

Who’s going to be in the healthy rotation?

The idea of the Sixers actually having a healthy rotation might seem far-fetched. There’s always something, but this stretch has given players on the Sixers’ bench an opportunity to show off their skills and make a case to regularly contribute.

There might not be a player who’s made a better case for himself over the last week than Justin Edwards, who scored 11 points in 25 minutes against Denver.

MarJon Beauchamp, still on a two-way deal, was the best Sixer on the floor Tuesday, scoring a team-high 16 points on 54.5% shooting, including four three-pointers.

Perhaps the lone bright spot in the 76ers’ blowout loss Tuesday to the San Antonio Spurs was Jabari Walker, who entered the game in garbage time and scored 20 points in 19 minutes, 29 seconds on 7-for-10 shooting.

Walker later told reporters that he’d “rather not sleep and just get back out there right now.” Walker woke up feeling good Wednesday morning, and he even picked up a new car after spending most of February Ubering around Philly.

That blissful state was threatened for a brief moment.

“I scratched it,” Walker said. “I talked to somebody coming in, I told them the story, they’re like, ‘It’s going to get better for you today.’ I was like, ‘All right, OK, I’m in my zone right now. I’m in basketball world. Whatever happened before stays out.’ So when I saw the first two [shots] go in, I was like, ‘OK. All right. This is a whole new world. I’ve got a chance to redeem myself.’”

Redeem himself he did. Walker scored 22 points on 7-of-12 shooting and grabbed 10 rebounds in the Sixers’ 106-102 win over the Utah Jazz. Walker’s final two free throws secured the game for the Sixers in the dying seconds of the fourth quarter.

Walker, who started the season on a two-way contract, exhausted his 50 games of eligibility just before the All-Star break, which kept him out of four games before the team converted his contract to a two-year standard deal on Feb. 16.

He’s been in and out of the lineup and seen his minutes fluctuate as the Sixers vacillate between levels of health. VJ Edgecombe was added to the injury report Wednesday with a back bruise, leaving the Sixers down four starters. Nick Nurse said pregame that they were going to need more from guys further down the bench.

Walker made his first six shots from the floor, starting with two quick threes in the first quarter, providing critical energy off the bench in addition to his usual effectiveness on the boards.

“People that really know me, I’m actually kind of crazy,” Walker said. “I talk a lot, and something’s really wrong with me, but I get a chance to let it out on the court.”

Nurse said that in practices and shootarounds, the coaching staff has been working to give Walker as much positive feedback as possible to try and get him to be more aggressive with his shot.

“We’ve been trying to get him to play like that because he’s a really good shooter,” Nurse said. “You just have to get used to the NBA feel and having enough [confidence] to pull the trigger on them. Noticeably better in his last few games. He’s just running the floor, ball comes to him and he’s open, and he just, not much hesitation on him.”

That support from Nurse has been there since Day 1, even before Walker felt like he’d earned it. “Him being vocal like that makes nights like this happen,” Walker said.

The injury status of Edgecombe and Joel Embiid is uncertain, and Paul George doesn’t return from a 25-game suspension for banned substances until the end of the month. With so much in flux, the Sixers don’t quite know what the best version of their lineup is or what their rotation will look like during a potential playoff run.

In the interim, games like Wednesday’s win provide critical opportunities for bench players like Walker to show what they can do in an expanded role. Walker said he thought his scoring likely masked some improvements he needed to make defensively, but he believes there’s a role on this team for him, even when the team is healthy.

“If my minutes have to go down, I’ll take it,” Walker said. “That’s what I signed up for. That’s the role I knew I was getting into. We have great, great players, we’ve got Hall of Famers that have to come back, so somebody has to take those minutes, and these are guys that get paid to do so. My job is to fill in and do exactly what I’m doing while they’re out.”

The hits keep coming for the 76ers.

In the final seconds of the second quarter of Tuesday’s blowout loss to the Spurs, VJ Edgecombe took a hard foul after San Antonio’s Carter Bryant tried to block his shot before the final buzzer. Edgecombe fell to the court and was down in pain for several seconds, before bouncing back to make two of his three free-throw attempts.

But Edgecombe did not return and was ruled out after halftime because of lower back soreness. He finished with six points and four rebounds in 19 minutes, 38 seconds.

The Sixers returned to the court less than 24 hours later for the second half of a back-to-back against Utah (7:30 p.m., NBCSP), and they’ll be without Edgecombe. Nick Nurse did not have an update on Edgecombe’s status immediately after the loss to the Spurs, but the team announced Wednesday that the rookie suffered a lumbar contusion and will miss their game against the Jazz. He will be reevaluated before Saturday’s game against the Hawks.

Tyrese Maxey, after being pulled from the game midway through the third quarter, spent the rest of the period with Edgecombe in the locker room. He said he’d call him Tuesday night for another update.

“No one likes getting hurt, but he’s the same, smiling, happy,” Maxey said. “We had a good conversation. That’s my little bro. I’m going to check on him. I couldn’t continue the game without checking on him.”

Before Edgecombe’s injury, the Sixers already were missing Joel Embiid, who will miss at least the next two games with a right oblique strain, and Kelly Oubre Jr., who was ill. The team also is without Paul George as he serves a 25-game suspension for taking a banned substance.

Losing Edgecombe even just for a day could have a big ripple effect on games to come.

The Sixers entered Wednesday in sixth place in the Eastern Conference, just a half-game ahead of the seventh-place Orlando Magic.

Since January, the Sixers have gone 2-9 without Embiid, whose availability remains uncertain. And Edgecombe, who has played 57 of the Sixers’ 61 games, has been a workhorse. He is averaging 15.3 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 3.9 assists in his rookie season. He’s the team’s fourth-leading scorer, behind Maxey, Embiid, and George. He’s also among the NBA leaders in minutes at 35.1 minutes per game, trailing only Maxey’s league-leading average of 38.3 minutes among Sixers.

Without Edgecombe or Embiid, even more offensive responsibility will fall on Maxey’s shoulders.

“We’re going to keep pushing,” Maxey said. “I’m going to be here every night, as long as I can move around and try to play and do those different things. I’m fighting through the adversity. I’ll be here and try to keep leading this group.”