March 20, 2026
Sergio Estrada/Imagn Images
Justin Edwards and Quentin Grimes have played a whole lot of March basketball together over the last two years.
If there is one feeling that has persisted throughout the 2025-26 Sixers season, it is volatility. Signs of major promise have been routinely followed up by devastating crashes back down to harsh realities, and vice versa.
So, it was only fitting that after suffering an embarrassing wire-to-wire loss at the hands of the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday, the shorthanded Sixers notched an emphatic 139-118 victory over the Sacramento Kings on Thursday. Even more fittingly, they still managed to display both high-caliber, cohesive play and brutal, sloppy runs. Luckily for the Sixers, there was much more of the former than the latter.
The Sixers opened the game on a torrid run led by Justin Edwards and won the first quarter handily. They coughed up a healthy lead in a matter of minutes to begin the second quarter, and trailed before VJ Edgecombe and Quentin Grimes led another excellent run to close the half. Grimes, no stranger to scoring binges in the month of March, helped build the lead the Sixers refused to relinquish in the third quarter, posting another terrific offensive performance in tandem with Edwards and Edgecombe, both of whom ended up with career-high scoring totals after additional barrages in the final frame.
Takeaways from another much-needed Sixers win, focused on the two career-best nights:
It was in Sacramento where Edwards, then an undrafted rookie on a two-way contract, received his first dose of NBA rotation minutes. Last season, head coach Nick Nurse decided to throw Edwards into the game and ask him to defend DeMar DeRozan, one of the league's most notoriously tough one-on-one covers. Edwards' focus was singular.
"They were telling me to be disciplined, really disciplined on DeMar last year, because he likes to do a lot of shot fake stuff," Edwards recalled before the Sixers hosted the Kings in January. "This year, I feel like – I've learned a lot, so I feel like I'll be more confident with the personnel, who I'm guarding."
In another starting nod on Thursday, Edwards had the DeRozan assignment. But it was on the offensive end of the floor where he made waves. Edwards, whose new workout tradition has helped him shoot the lights out on early touches, buried a three-point shot on the Sixers' first possession of the game. He did it over Russell Westbrook, his favorite point guard growing up (Edwards' favorite player was Kevin Durant, so he rooted for the Oklahoma City Thunder).
On the next possession, Edwards connected on another three. Then he scored in the mid-range. Then he converted an acrobatic layup. Then, another triple. He was oozing confidence on every play. In the game's opening six minutes, the Sixers had scored 26 points. Edwards was responsible for 13 of them, and he was only getting started:
Justin Edwards scored 13 points in the first six minutes of Sixers-Kings on Thursday: pic.twitter.com/azgII4ldCa
— Adam Aaronson's clips (@SixersAdamClips) March 20, 2026
It was a full-circle eruption for Edwards, who finished with 32 points, including seven triples, and over the last few weeks has been making something of a sophomore campaign which for a long while seemed like it was destined to be a failure. Edwards failed to take advantage of his early-season chances to grab a rotation spot, but has fully capitalized on the Sixers' current collection of injuries.
Particularly given how confidently he is taking and making spot-up threes, Edwards has built a compelling case that he should be part of Nurse's bench rotation over players like Trendon Watford and Jabari Walker if the Sixers reach full health (Walker had been the only member of this year's Sixers not to miss a game due to an injury or illness before a sickness wiped him out for three games. Walker, who did not travel with the team to Denver for Tuesday's game, met the Sixers in Sacramento and made his return on Thursday night. Walker was ahead of the struggling Watford in Nurse's initial rotation, then Watford was not used in the second-half rotation).
Edgecombe had it all working as a scorer in this one; he was dominant inside the arc. Edgecombe knew and lamented the fact that his 34-point NBA debut was the last and only time he had scored 30 points in an NBA game. He got there before the end of the third quarter on Thursday, and within a few minutes of the final frame beginning he cashed a triple to reach 36 points:
The 20-year-old rookie was efficient and aggressive all night long as a scorer, but also stuck to the right decisions all night long. He was absolutely outstanding across the board, racking up a career-high in assists as he crossed double-digits in the dishes department for the first time in his NBA career.
While Maxey's absence has undoubtedly made life harder for Edgecombe – he has been open and honest about his difficulties handling double-teams for the first time in his NBA life – and his season-long efficiency and turnover marks will suffer as a result, a solid argument could be made that a few weeks of operating as a primary ball-handler at this level will help inform Edgecombe's development moving forward. His passing and ball-handling chops are far better than anticipated so far, but it is difficult to imagine him becoming a star-level offensive player without making even more pronounced strides in those areas.
This one-handed alley-oop slam from Edgecombe, off an assist from Edwards, is worth seeing:
VJ OH MY. pic.twitter.com/PWRAMrXxZk
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) March 20, 2026
Edgecombe's final line, cemented as Thursday night turned to Friday morning in Philadelphia, was a doozy: 38 points, 11 assists and seven rebounds on 16-for-27 shooting from the field and 3-for-7 shooting from three-point range. It was the highest-scoring game by a Sixers rookie since... this game.
Up next: The Sixers will complete their road trip on Saturday night when they take on the Utah Jazz.
