Category: Sixers/NBA

About 10 days ago, Nick Nurse jokingly proclaimed that maybe the 76ers would play better in the third quarter if they spent halftime regrouping on the bench, instead of inside the locker room. Veteran Kyle Lowry suggested to star guard Tyrese Maxey that perhaps the players should try another round of layup lines before the second half begins.

There was no making light of the ongoing problem late Wednesday, when another dreadful third quarter doomed the Sixers in a 121-112 loss to the Toronto Raptors on the front end of a back-to-back. For a season that so far has been a pleasant 8-6 surprise, the Sixers’ perplexing struggles during that specific quarter remain a worthy criticism.

“A lot of bad, right?” Nurse said when asked again Wednesday about the blunders.

The Sixers were outscored 44-26 in Wednesday’s third quarter, flipping a three-point halftime advantage into a 15-point deficit entering the final frame. And though they rallied in the fourth — another quality consistently flashed throughout the early season — that hole ultimately was too deep to fully overcome against the streaking Raptors (10-5).

When the third-quarter topic was broached again Wednesday, a far more terse Maxey pointed to the Sixers’ turnovers (eight, which Toronto parlayed into 15 points) and defensive breakdowns (the Raptors shot 68.4% from the floor, including a blistering 5-of-6 on three-pointers) as the primary areas to blame. Nurse added that the Sixers committed five fouls in less than four minutes, leading to a whopping 16 free-throw attempts (and 13 shots made) for the Raptors during that period.

“Just set the tone for a really bad quarter,” Nurse said.

It was the latest on a growing list of “really bad” third quarters populating the regular season’s opening month. The Sixers have “lost” 11 of their 14 third quarters, with one tie. They have been outscored by 111 total points (454-343) in that frame, with an average of 24.5 points per third quarter.

On Oct. 30, Nurse said the reasons for the Sixers’ woes during those 12 minutes were “under investigation.” Subsequent questions to the coach as the dilemma persisted did not yield revelations about correctable through-lines or themes.

Separately and unprompted, Maxey and reserve big man Jabari Walker have suggested that it may now be a collective mental block.

“Man, I think it’s a mindset thing, honestly,” Walker said Wednesday, after a long exhale. “We’ll figure it out. But it’s honestly mindset. It’s nothing besides that.”

After a Nov. 5 loss at the Cleveland Cavaliers, Nurse floated the idea of starting a different group at the beginning of each half, a tactic he has previously used to spark his team coming out of the locker room.

That has transpired in the Sixers’ past three games. One change was out of necessity, when wing Kelly Oubre Jr. went down with an LCL sprain in his left knee in the second quarter of last Friday’s loss at the Detroit Pistons. But Wednesday night, Quentin Grimes and Trendon Watford replaced starters Justin Edwards and Dominick Barlow in the first group to play after the break.

That approach placed Grimes on a better rotation pattern for the closing lineup, with which he scored 15 of his 21 points in Wednesday’s fourth quarter. It also allowed the coaching staff to make judgments in real time, to cater to specific matchups or ride a role player who excelled in the first half.

“It just changes the rhythm of the start of the second half,” Nurse said in Cleveland. “It doesn’t mean you’re penalizing anyone in particular. Just trying to look for solutions.”

That lineup tweak, however, did not solve the issue Wednesday. The Raptors began the third on a 10-2 run, and never surrendered the lead after that.

And perhaps the third-quarter gaffes are even more glaring because of the Sixers’ knack for clawing back in the fourth quarter.

They have already played an NBA-leading 12 “clutch” games, going 7-5 in such situations. They also have already tied an NBA record for most victories by a team that entered the fourth quarter trailing by double digits, with four.

It looked like the Sixers might be on their way to such a result again, when a Grimes three-pointer capped a 24-12 run to slash the Raptors’ lead to 109-106 with 5:25 to play. But the work required to rally meant the Sixers could not afford defensive miscues down the stretch, which helped Toronto re-extend its lead.

Before making the quip about staying on the floor during halftime, Nurse bristled a bit at a question about the Boston Celtics outscoring the Sixers, 36-20, in the third before his team rallied to a Nov. 11 win. The coach said, “I’d rather be a better fourth-quarter team” because, “in the fourth quarters, we’re pretty damn good.”

But inside the Sixers’ postgame locker room that night, the phrase “30th in 3Q” had been written on a white board — with the word “STILL” in red. Ten days later, this is still plaguing a positive start to the season.

So why does the Sixers’ third-quarter problem persist?

“To be honest, we don’t know,” rookie VJ Edgecombe said. “If we had it all figured out, there would be no slow starts to third quarters.”

Paul George didn’t waste any time in his return to NBA action on Monday night, taking just 36 seconds to block a James Harden shot and turn a quick give-and-go with Tyrese Maxey into a catch-and-shoot three-pointer for his first made basket since March 4. It was a much-missed glimpse into the do-it-all player that PG had been billed as when he first came to the 76ers as a major free-agency coup in the summer of 2024 — a sight that was all too rare with George limited to 41 games in a disappointing Philly debut.

Of course, the rest of George’s night wasn’t quite as smooth: He scored six additional points and went 1-for-8 from the field (0-for-3 from deep) after drilling that early jumper, while the Sixers were outscored by 12 in his remaining minutes — though he did grab seven rebounds and dish three assists in his 21 minutes of court time. All told, it was roughly what you could have expected out of a 35-year-old who hadn’t suited up in 259 days.

Because of this — along with the fact that Joel Embiid was out — it’s tough to draw too many sweeping conclusions from George’s season debut. But between what we saw on Monday and the general profile of similar players at this age, we do have some clues about what PG might have left in the tank this season, when he’s available — which is always a question mark — and how it could help the Sixers improve at both ends while lightening the load on Maxey.

For one thing, it’s already clear George is going to get plenty of touches even while coexisting alongside Maxey’s ongoing development into a huge scorer. His usage rate on Monday was 28%, which was higher than both his figure last season (23.5%) and what it was during his final season with the Los Angeles Clippers in 2023-24 (26.6%). Along the way, he launched some threes, got to the line plenty, and made a few plays as a ballhandler and passer as well. Despite easing himself back into live play, George is still a future Hall of Famer who commands plenty of attention from opponents.

And the Sixers do need a guy like that. Aside from Maxey, who had a sky-high 39.1% usage rate on Monday and carries a 30.8 share — 15th-highest in the NBA — this season overall, the Sixers haven’t had anyone else who can consistently initiate and/or finish possessions when Embiid is sidelined. Not including Maxey, Embiid, and George, the only other Sixers player (in at least 20 total minutes) with a usage above the league average of 20% is Quentin Grimes at 21.5%. Usage rate estimates the percentage of a team’s possessions a player “uses” while on the court, showing how much the offense is centered on them.

To be sure, others have been efficient within their roles. Kelly Oubre Jr., Andre Drummond and Trendon Watford are all comfortably above the league’s average true shooting percentage, while Justin Edwards and Dominick Barlow have made great use of their chances when their number gets called.

But the Sixers offense has been notably top-heavy in its distribution of plays toward just a small number of players so far this season. And we can see this if we look at each Sixer player’s share of total team plays (FG and FT attempts, assists and turnovers), tracking how concentrated those plays are among a given number of players.

For instance, Maxey has personally been responsible for 26.1% of his team’s total plays this year, the highest rate in the league. Maxey and VJ Edgecombe have combined for 40.9% of plays, which is the highest share for any teammate tandem in the league. Maxey, Edgecombe, Grimes, and Oubre have collectively shared 66.8% of Philly’s plays, the highest rate for any quartet of players in the league … and so forth:

This isn’t inherently a bad thing, and one needs only to look back upon the 2022-23 Sixers to find a team with the fourth-best offense in the league despite a disproportionately large share of possessions going to Embiid, Harden, Maxey and Tobias Harris. But Maxey in particular is being asked to carry a massive load so far this season, as one of just 10 players across the league with a usage rate and an assist rate north of 30%.

So anything George can do to alleviate that burden — and not merely be an expensive role player for the 2025-26 Sixers — would do wonders for an offense that ranks 11th in the league efficiency-wise but may not be able to sustain that level while asking Maxey to play 40.4 minutes per game at his current level of usage.

Can George do that, though, given his age and injury profile?

Based on his percentile grades relative to the league last season, PG had already slipped from a 95th-percentile to a 49th-percentile player overall, with notable drops in his true shooting (77th to 19th) and turnover percentiles (67th to 17th). If we look for the most similar players by skills at a similar age, George’s top comps went from Manu Ginóbili, Clyde Drexler, Kawhi Leonard, Michael Jordan, and Eddie Jones in 2023-24 to Stephen Jackson, Bobby Jackson and old versions of Dwyane Wade, Scottie Pippen, and Vince Carter in 2024-25.

That doesn’t exactly inspire tremendous confidence in what he can do this season, even when healthy, although Pippen (as a Trail Blazer) in 2002 and Carter (as a Maverick) in 2012 were more effective than we probably remember them being. The average themes across George’s top-20 comps from last year as they got a year older were that they scored less (down 9 percentile points in usage and 7 points in per-possession scoring), though perhaps a bit more efficiently, had fewer assists (down 6 points) and were less of a factor in rebounding (down 4 points), steals (down 6 points) and defense overall (down 8 points).

Those changes would leave George further diminished as an aging star wing, if still a useful one for his above-average scoring, passing, and defense. And based on what we saw in his season debut Monday, that’s probably about what George’s potential is for the season at large. He may not be the MVP candidate of his prime nor even the All-Star he was for L.A. in 2024, but he can still provide the Sixers with plenty of things they need if he can stay on the court.

After 12 games on the shelf recovering from offseason knee surgery, Paul George finally made his season debut Monday night against the Clippers.

Nick Nurse doesn’t expect George to play both legs of the Sixers’ upcoming back-to-back against the Raptors and the Bucks, but he said his star forward exited the game feeling healthy.

“He was good,” Nurse said Tuesday. “Came out good. Felt good. Feels good. Today he was a full participant in practice.”

George, who signed a four-year max contract ahead of last season, played 21 minutes and scored nine points against his former team. Nurse said before George’s season debut that the forward would be on a minutes restriction but did not get into specifics.

Although George shot 2-for-9 from the field, including 1-for-4 from three-point range, the Sixers are already feeling his impact on both ends of the floor.

“We all know [what] he can do as far as on-ball defending, but he’s also a great off-ball defender, being there for us, being able to help, being loud,” Trendon Watford said. “I think that’s what we’ve been missing. With Kelly [Oubre Jr.] going out, Kelly being the vocal guy on defense, and obviously the guy who takes the toughest matchups, Paul can fill that void for us.”

Dominick Barlow, who played his second game since returning from an elbow laceration, idolized George growing up. He said the spacing George brings on the floor helped open up the game for the entire team.

“It’s going to make our lineups a lot more interesting, and it’s going to be fun,” Barlow said.

Barlow’s return

Speaking of injuries, Barlow said he’s at full strength and not restricted in any way after a procedure to repair the cut in his elbow. He is working with the medical team to prevent the cut from reopening but said he’s not overly concerned about it.

Barlow believes his vision on the court already is improving.

“Seeing driving angles, I had a couple of straight line drives that I was able to attack, so I’d probably say that was the biggest thing,” Barlow said. “I’m just trying to get some more pop back in my legs.”

The Sixers did not have updates on the health status of Oubre or Joel Embiid, Nurse said. Embiid was a full participant in practice Tuesday but has missed four consecutive games because of soreness in his right knee.

“He’s OK, I would say,” Nurse said ahead of Monday’s game. “Just not quite pain-free. Still day to day. I think it’s getting better. I don’t think he’s far away from playing.”

Oubre missed Monday’s game with a lateral collateral ligament injury in his left knee, which he suffered Friday in a loss to the Detroit Pistons. Nurse said the team is still waiting for an update on his status.

When Paul George received an opening-minute pass from Tyrese Maxey and let the three-pointer fly from the right wing, his stoic backpedaling as the ball splashed through the net did not exactly convey his actual feelings.

“I watched it, and there were so many emotions inside,” George later said. “There were zero emotions outside. Honestly, I was just trying to focus on just the game and staying locked in and engaged, but it felt great to make the first shot.”

Monday was far from the first time George has taken the floor after a monthslong injury recovery, but he used the words “rusty” and “rewarding” to describe his first NBA game action since early March. He totaled nine points, seven rebounds, three assists, and two blocks in 21 minutes, 6 seconds of the 76ers’ 110-108 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers at Xfinity Mobile Arena.

“It was a long journey,” George said at his locker following the Sixers’ win over his former team. “A lot of ups and downs. A lot of hiccups. But felt good to finally get back out there.”

Clippers coach Tyronn Lue — who is more than familiar with George’s game and injury history — quipped before tipoff that he “just [hopes George is] not himself tonight.” Yet it would be unreasonable to expect a 35-year-old George to immediately return to All-Star form following a July arthroscopic knee surgery — and while limited to roughly five-minute stints at the beginning of each quarter.

It took George less than 60 seconds to record his first block, rebound, and points of the season. Sixers coach Nick Nurse said he considered running plays specifically for George, but instead opted to see what opportunities the 6-foot-8 wing would organically discover in a revamped offensive scheme that emphasizes pace and passing.

George went 2-of-9 from the field, an indicator of that rust. Yet Nurse appreciated George’s commitment to rebounding and instantly slinging the ball ahead in transition — like in the second quarter, when he found a streaking Quentin Grimes, who drew a foul. The lack of offensive rhythm, George said, could be attributed to pushing to regain his game-level cardio and conditioning in those abbreviated stints.

“Before you know it, five minutes is up, and then [you’re] getting subbed out,” George said. “I’ve always kind of let the game come to me. I thought today I was a little rushed, trying to make the most of that five minutes every quarter. A lot of possessions were kind of uncomfortable from just how I play.”

The internal reviews for George were higher on defense, the end of the floor where Nurse was more eager to observe George’s impact. George said he rolled through a mental checklist, clocking that he could slide his feet, stay in front of ballhandlers, and “just fly around.” In the third quarter, for instance, George elevated to block a John Collins floater and pinned the ball to the side of his body.

“Right away,” George said, “it was like, ‘All right, I’m ready for this. I can move. I can react. I can play physical. I can beat the guy to his spot. I can rebound.’”

Monday’s outing marked George’s latest comeback in a decorated career interrupted by injuries. In his first season with the Sixers, he battled multiple knee issues — plus a finger injury that eventually required painkilling injections in order to play — before being shut down after 41 games.

Then came a “freak accident” during an offseason workout, restarting George’s recovery timeline after knee surgery.

Though George had been practicing with the Sixers for about a month, his left quadriceps muscle “was just weak from being shut down for so long,” he said. George went through a strengthening program targeting that muscle, with extra reps on the left side of squats and leg extensions. He said he had a “huge breakthrough” a few days ago, when the measurable data on his left quad finally matched his right.

“That was kind of the stamp,” George said, “to go along with how I felt on court and to be clinically cleared.”

From here, George and the Sixers’ medical team will monitor how his body tolerated Monday’s workload. The Sixers already have evidence that long-term injury recovery does not always occur in a straight line.

Joel Embiid missed his fourth consecutive game Monday with right knee injury management, even amid a cautious plan with minutes restrictions and scheduled absences to aid his left knee that has undergone multiple surgeries. Jared McCain, who missed nearly 11 months after knee and thumb surgeries, has not scored a point in four games since his return earlier this month.

And there are legitimate questions about George’s ability to ever rekindle his perennial All-Star production or whether he will be more of a veteran role player with this iteration of the Sixers’ roster. After signing a max contract as the NBA’s most coveted free agent during the 2024 offseason, George struggled to get by defenders in his first season in Philly. He averaged 16.2 points — his lowest scoring average over a full season in more than a decade — along with 5.3 rebounds, 4.3 assists, and 1.8 steals.

When asked about his role at media day in late September, George said, “I do think I’ve still got a lot of game in me.” Following Monday’s game, George added that he hopes his offensive creation can take some pressure off Maxey, who amassed another 39 points and six assists in 40:57 against the Clippers. But George also recognizes that teammates, such as Grimes and rookie VJ Edgecombe, also can put the ball on the floor and make plays for a Sixers squad that is off to a surprising 8-5 start and entered Tuesday ranked seventh in the NBA in offensive efficiency (117.8 points per 100 possessions).

“That’s really why our team is special and so versatile,” George said. “So [I’m] just trying to fit into what the guys are doing now.”

George, though, still holds gravitas within the Sixers locker room. Fellow veteran Andre Drummond called him “very smart” on both ends of the floor. Maxey praised George’s defensive presence. And Edgecombe said sharing the floor with George for the first time brought out his “inner child” who was a “big fan” of his while growing up in the Bahamas.

“I wanted him to get going early,” Edgecombe said of George. “At least feel the ball, feel the flow of the game.”

By crunch time, though, George had a towel draped over his shoulders while standing with teammates to watch the final possession unfold. When the Clippers’ James Harden missed two potential game-winning three-pointers, George lifted his arms into the air in celebration.

Finishing the game on the bench illustrated how much reacclimation remains for George. But making his season debut — and that first shot — was a start.

“It felt great to finally play basketball again,” George said.