January 09, 2026
Nathan Ray Seebeck/Imagn Images
Friday's game marked the five-year anniversary of Tyrese Maxey's first NBA start.
Friday night marked Nick Nurse's 200th game as head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, and only the 12th time his entire roster of players has been available. Kelly Oubre Jr. and Trendon Watford still need to ramp up – and, as tremendous as Joel Embiid's recent progress has been, he still has a ways to go himself – but the Sixers are living in a world they have not inhabited in over two years. They are completely healthy.
So far, so good, as the Sixers have now won back-to-back games since reaching full strength. They won for the fifth time in six games, beating the Orlando Magic on Friday, 103-91, notching a critical Eastern Conference victory as their surge continues.
After a sluggish first half on both sides, Tyrese Maxey staged one of his classic heaters in the third quarter, while Joel Embiid and Paul George did just enough to give the Sixers a lead before a lineup that Nurse might be falling in love with put the game firmly out of reach.
Takeaways from the 21st win of the 2025-26 Sixers season:
For the second game in a row, the Sixers put a game away with a torrid stretch early in the fourth quarter. For the second game in a row, they did it with a five-man unit that was absolutely swarming defensively and had enough supplemental shot-making to create more separation. The Sixers finding success with Maxey and Embiid both on the bench will be pivotal; it enables Nurse to keep those two players together more often, lean into their lethal two-man game and ease the burdens of both of them.
Perhaps the lineup that once again put a game out of reach for the Sixers – VJ Edgecombe and Quentin Grimes in the backcourt with George and Oubre on the wing and Andre Drummond manning the middle – can become a rotation staple. The defensive versatility of the group is off the charts; all four perimeter players in the unit can legitimately defend one through four in a pinch and three of them can do it fairly routinely.
On the offensive end of the floor, George and Edgecombe have been very good scaling their scoring aggression up when Maxey and/or Embiid are sitting, and they will both need to keep that up moving forward. It was George who really took control on Friday, leading the way for the Sixers in scoring down the stretch.
In Oubre's Sixers tenure, one of his greatest strengths has been propping up bench units with his rim pressure, and once he is back to the player that was giving the Sixers enormous two-way value earlier in the season this grouping will become even more formidable.
On Wednesday, this unit first began its run late in the third quarter and Nurse rode it until the midway point of the final frame. This time around, he opened the fourth quarter with it, and within five minutes the Sixers had built a lead that Orlando could never seriously threaten to overcome.
As Nurse's rotation takes shape now that he has a full complement of players available, finding units like this one that he can bank on for positive minutes will be one of his key steps. This grouping and its defensive versatility on the perimeter has stood out a whole lot.
As the Sixers have reached full health and, in recent weeks, played like a surefire playoff contender in the Eastern Conference, the fact that Friday's game kickstarted a five-game stretch against teams near them in the standings is worth noting. And in terms of seeding implications, this battle with the Magic was the most important of those games.
The Sixers have won their season series with Orlando, 2-1, after splitting their two meetings in Philadelphia and nabbing a win on Friday. If the teams finish with identical records, the Sixers will have earned a higher seed thanks to their victory in Orlando tonight and their October victory against the Magic in Philadelphia.
Odds are, the tiebreaker will not be of relevance when the season ends. But in a jumbled conference where only the Detroit Pistons have considerable separation from the pack, every game and every tiebreaker matters.
Case in point: the Sixers, Magic and Indiana Pacers all finished with records of 47-35 two seasons ago, tying them for the No. 5 seed. The three-team tiebreaker forced the Sixers into the No. 7 seed, which forced them into the Play-In Tournament and then a difficult first-round playoff series against the New York Knicks. Last season, five of the top eight teams in the Western Conference were included in tiebreaker scenarios. There is always a chance something like this becomes pivotal.
Some additional notes:
• Embiid being upgraded from questionable to probable and then available marked the first time since that series against the Knicks in which the former NBA MVP appeared in six consecutive games. The last time he accomplished it in the regular season: Jan. 15-25 of 2023. Embiid averaged 42.0 points per game during that period.
• After the Sixers' win over the Washington Wizards on Wednesday, Nurse shouted out Drummond, a recent victim of a numbers game. Adem Bona firmly supplanted Drummond as Embiid's primary backup in recent weeks, but Nurse has continually embraced fluidity in that spot. He has ridden hot hands until they get cold, then he goes to another hand. So when Bona struggled in the first half against Washington, Nurse decided at halftime to go with Drummond, who responded by knocking down a pair of corner triples. Unsurprisingly, Nurse opted to go with Drummond as his backup five on Friday.
• Justin Edwards was not with the Sixers for this game; he remains on G League assignment. One signature performance aside, Edwards' second NBA season has been a massive disappointment so far. He joins rookie second-round pick Johni Broome on the outside looking in. The Sixers having reliability from two two-way players in Dominick Barlow and Jabari Walker makes it easier to stomach, but this is suboptimal for a team that is using two roster spots on Eric Gordon and Kyle Lowry and has been unable to get quality minutes out of Jared McCain while also leaving a spot open.
• With a pair of early free throws, Paul George became the 67th player in NBA history to reach 19,000 career points.
• Thank you to Kate Scott, who on the NBC Sports Philadelphia broadcast highlighted PhillyVoice's reporting on Friday being the five-year anniversary of Maxey's first NBA start, a game in which he scored 39 points as the offensive engine of a team reduced to seven players. That feature is linked below.
Up next: The Sixers will leave the country for a few days; they now head to Toronto for a back-to-back against the Raptors on Sunday and Monday.
MORE: Five years later, the 'Seven Sixers' recall the 'weird' day Maxey shined
