CHICAGO – The Sixers will take a 2-1 road trip, and on Sunday afternoon they were thrilled to be getting on an airplane headed to Philadelphia.

"Obviously we're a new group, so we're still learning, we're still getting acclimated, we're still getting comfortable with one another every single game," LeBron James said after the Sixers held onto a win over the Chicago Bulls. "So a road trip definitely helps. Three-game road trip, to be able to go 2-on-1 and also just play better than we did in Cleveland."

Sunday's matinee was the Sixers' first chance to respond to true adversity after being handled by the Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday night, and they came away with a win. That, paired with an impressive victory over the Detroit Pistons on Wednesday night, made for a winning trip.

In this week's 5 Sixers thoughts, diving into takeaways from the Sixers' first three-game road swing of the year:

Jaylen Brown, power forward

When Sixers head coach Nick Nurse started jotting down potential lineups and substitution patterns over the summer, he probably did not spend a lot of time focused on the idea of Jaylen Brown sliding up to the four. Yet, even with James and Dean Wade available to play major minutes at power forward, lineups with Brown in that spot have become a critical staple of Nurse's early-season rotation.

"I think that it’s really early. But a lot of teams right now seem to be starting with a center and a big four and when they sub, sometimes it goes all the way to four guards," Nurse said before Friday's game in Cleveland. "Not even a wing. Sometimes it’s three guards and a wing, four guards and a big. And I just think that you've got to be able to run around with those groups sometimes. So that probably answers some of that, why we end up that way."

The Sixers do not get smaller off their bench – Anfernee Simons is their lone perimeter reserve in the rotation without strong positional size – but they are an exception in that way.

The sample remains a bit too small to take much away from, but despite going so small with this look – Brown has generally played alongside three of Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Simons, plus one big – the defensive results have been fantastic. Perhaps it is luck. Perhaps it is Nurse finding the perfect times to use those lineups. Perhaps it is a bit of both.

Ultimately, Nurse is trying to maximize his team's athleticism in those lineups, which also lends itself to defensive versatility in some ways. Brown's defense was characteristically a mixed bag on this road trip, but it started on a great note. He bottled up Pistons superstar Cade Cunningham on a handful of occasions on Wednesday, then sealed his best performance in a Sixers uniform with a block of Cunningham's late three-point try.

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How Nick Nurse wants his team to support Joel Embiid

For most of Wednesday's win over the Pistons, the Sixers were moving the ball with decisiveness and keeping Detroit's dominant defense from imposing its will on the game. The Sixers found mismatches and exploited them, with Joel Embiid being a particularly dominant interior force and James leading the way in terms of playmaking.

Both Embiid and James can make life a whole lot easier for their teammates – and each other – but they need specific kinds of support. In Friday's loss to the Cavaliers, Nurse did not see enough of it. Embiid shot 0-for-9 from the field and James had twice as many turnovers as made shots. Embiid's struggles were probably more glaring in Cleveland – in part because he has typically been able to provide an automatic quality look against single coverage.

Maxey has the strongest acumen when it comes to leveraging Embiid's gravity, but Brown has started to figure out ways to cut off of him – something Edgecombe made major strides in later on last season. Nurse did not like the way his team failed to create passing opportunities for Embiid on a night his scoring was muted.

"I didn't think we played well enough when he had the ball," Nurse said.

On Sunday in Chicago, the Sixers found an offensive stride despite Embiid remaining inefficient. Teammates cut off of his post-ups. There was ball movement and player movement. How often does Embiid talk to new teammates about what he is looking for with the ball, and how much do the Sixers simply read the floor and react? 

"We read and react and we talk," Embiid said. "Extremely high basketball IQ. So it’s just understood, and I feel like there hasn't been much of a conversation because it’s just basketball. If they double me, cut, we make the pass and we play out of that. Like I said, we've got a lot of high basketball IQ in the room, so there hasn’t really been needing to have a conversation."

Changing up staggers

Nurse made some meaningful changes to his rotation on Sunday. Instead of staggering Brown and Maxey together while pairing up James, Embiid and Edgecombe, he put James and Brown together, reuniting Maxey with Embiid and Edgecombe.

"Cool," Maxey said after the game. "Had no idea, but it's fine. I didn't know until today. It was cool though. I just do what they tell me to do around here."

Why the change?

“A little bit of a different thought going into this game," Nurse said. "I wanted to get a look at how that rolled out."

With so many combinations of stars he can lean on, expect Nurse to continue staggering his players in different permutations all year. His goal should be to get to the playoffs with a firm understanding of his best substitution patterns.

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Where are the blowouts?

The Sixers have gotten an enormous number of crunch-time reps on both ends of the floor in the opening weeks of the season, and they rightfully believe they will be better off for it.

"I think it's certainly good experience for us to be in these situations and to deliver for the most part," Nurse said after a comeback win in Indianapolis last month. "...I think it's good to get tested on this stuff, because I think the more you get in these things, the more you can see the confidence build."

Playing 48 intense minutes night in and night out, the Sixers know, is not a recipe for success. The best teams can put games away soundly and give their best players chances to bank extra rest without missing games. There is already concern about the Sixers’ five starters logging heavy minutes totals. Their playing time has been so significant because they have not been able to put games away before the final few minutes.

Even as they got handled by the Cavaliers on Friday, it was not until about the four-minute mark of the final frame that Nurse started getting his best players out of the game.

The Sixers have largely been unable to produce enough on the offensive end of the floor to create a massive margin. Both games the Sixers played against Chicago – they handled the lowly Bulls in Philadelphia on Monday before winning a shootout in Chicago on Sunday – were opportunities to do it, facing one of the league's worst teams. It is not the end of the world to miss such opportunities, but there is a cost to every minute logged by a key player on this team – especially James and Embiid.

Tacko Fall makes his Sixers debut

When the Cleveland game did finally get put to bed, two-way center Tacko Fall finally made his Sixers debut. Fall, the 7-foot-6 30-year-old, has been healthy since Oct. 30 but only activated for two games since then. Fall logged three minutes on Friday.

"It's good to get him out there," Nurse said. "I think that it's better to at least get him some minutes just with any of those guys, and I hate to say it, but they're not that meaningful. But at least gets him out there and gets some rhythm and gets a chance for us to see him and see how he looks out there."

Asked after Fall was converted to a two-way contract how the Sixers envisioned using him, Nurse did not show his cards. And it does not remain entirely clear whether the Sixers see a path for Fall to log legitimate minutes at center or if they see him as a potential specialist of sorts.

Fall can guard an inbounds pass at the end of the clock or come in for a critical rebound on a free throw. But can he keep up with the pace of an NBA game? That has been the question since his debut in 2019.

Fall has gotten in better shape and has immense confidence that with opportunity will come success. That he has yet to factor into the rotation puzzle despite all of the Sixers' frontcourt injuries says a lot about where he stands.

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