After what have been three emotional days, the Sixers really stood to benefit from a victory against a very good Phoenix Suns team on Saturday night. And, two weeks and change after the Suns stormed to a victory Philadelphia, Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey led the Sixers to an impressive 109-103 win.

After the Sixers showed a favorite of fans and players the door – with nobody entering to replace him – they had a catastrophic loss to the Los Angeles Lakers. That all came before the many headlines that stemmed from President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey's controversial press conference. Given all that has gone on over the last few days, perhaps this victory can settle things down for all parties involved.

Embiid was once again brilliant from the start; he is as good of a first-quarter scorer as there is in the NBA and cruised to another 30-point game on excellent efficiency. Maxey got going early, too; once his efficiency tailed off a bit the Sixers got a very helpful scoring jolt from Kelly Oubre Jr. from a few different spots on the floor. 

The Sixers did also benefit from a horrid three-point shooting performance by the Suns, but their defensive connectivity was leaps and bounds ahead of where it was in the second half of Thursday's game. They created a healthy lead in the second quarter and never looked back, thwarting a few Suns pushes and finally putting the game away behind a resurgent Maxey down the stretch.

Takeaways from the 30th win of the 2025-26 Sixers season:

Some important three-point shooting progressions

Even as Embiid has regained some version of his former dominant self, he could not figure out why his three-point shot had yet to come along. Embiid just passed the 30-percent mark on long-range attempts on Thursday, and believe it or not that was over a month in the making. Embiid is such a dominant interior scorer that he does not need to constantly take threes, but having some consistency from beyond the arc would make him even more difficult to guard than he has already become this season and round out a true three-level scoring repertoire.

Embiid clearly had a feeling about his three-point stroke on Saturday, because he came out firing from long range. The results were great; Embiid knocked down three early triples. There is a certain decisiveness Embiid sometimes plays with as a shooter that is easy to detect. He had it on those early threes, including this one created by a hustle play from VJ Edgecombe, whose night was otherwise quiet due to foul trouble:

Embiid, who has adopted a version of Oubre's three-point celebration, banked in a late three from the top of the key, notching a new season high with four long-range makes:

Speaking of Oubre...

Morey commented during his 29-minute media availability on Friday that Oubre is playing the best basketball of his career. There is a very real chance that assessment is true, and with Paul George out for the better part of two months, Oubre has never been more valuable during his Sixers tenure. Oubre is a versatile defensive playmaker, ready, willing and able to guard stars from point guard to power forward – though he had a few inexcusable defensive miscues down the stretch. Oubre can pressure the rim and provide timely doses of scoring; his focus on slowing down as a driver has led to better shot attempts and decisions.

The true difference-maker for Oubre this year, as simple as it might sound, is that he is making more of his spot-up threes. Entering Saturday's game, the 30-year-old was making 36.9 percent of his long-range tries this season, a terrific mark given his volume and the difficulty of the shots he takes. But Oubre has been a better shooter since returning from a lengthy absence due to his left knee injury. Across his last 15 appearances entering Saturday, Oubre was hitting 41.4 percent of his three-point tries. While that caliber of accuracy will not last, Oubre is having his best shooting season since he was a member of the Suns six seasons ago, and it continued in his former stomping grounds.

Quentin Grimes enters the spotlight

The Sixers trading away a burgeoning Jared McCain and failing to add any guard help to backfill his spot put significantly more pressure on the three guards head coach Nick Nurse has relied on all year. Kyle Lowry, 39, is nominally the fourth guard on this team, though Trendon Watford's unorthodox style as a point forward gives the Sixers some more ball-handling depth.

And while Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe's high-minute roles come with obvious expectations, Morey was making a significant gamble: that Quentin Grimes could turn his season around.

A few weeks into the season, Grimes looked primed to be a Sixth Man of the Year candidate, powering hugely successful three-guard lineups by defending above his size, knocking down clutch shots and seamlessly toggling between on- and off-ball responsibilities.

Since then, though, Grimes' offensive outbursts have been far and few between; it is far more typical that he has a muted performance and his three-point shooting has been bizarrely inaccurate for a month. Grimes is still a useful player because teams do not feel very comfortable leaving him open on the perimeter, he can attack closeouts and is trustworthy across multiple positions defensively. But he has provided very little on-ball scoring juice over the last several weeks, and given George's suspension, the Sixers could really use some. Grimes has always been somewhat of an erratic decision-maker, but his ill-advised plays have felt more frequent of late, too.

Grimes did not have a particularly noteworthy line in the box score on Saturday, but coming off four-plus weeks of often being invisible for prolonged stretches, he did feel more like a part of this game. The Sixers will need more tangible production from him moving forward, though they did get an awesome stint from a lineup of Maxey and four reserves, with Grimes, Watford, Justin Edwards and Adem Bona joining the star guard for a dynamic spurt of seven minutes and 26 seconds to begin the second quarter. The Sixers outscored Phoenix by nine points during that stretch, looking cohesive on both ends of the floor.

Ultimately, just as Morey made a bet on McCain not improving his value after a brutal start to his second season, he made a bet on Grimes finding his early season form and becoming a true difference-maker again. If Grimes can turn his season back around, he could stand to benefit a whole lot financially when he becomes an unrestricted free agent in the upcoming offseason.

On Friday, Morey said he was eager to re-sign Grimes after a contentious restricted free agency was fruitless before Grimes accepted his qualifying offer.

"Yeah, absolutely," Morey said. "In fact, we talked to his representation quite a bit through this period. Obviously, who knows exactly what the future brings, but we think he's a tremendous fit with our other guards, a two-way player, and we hope to re-sign him."

Odds and ends

Some additional notes:

• At one point in the third quarter, there was a bit of a dust-up between Oubre and infamous instigator Dillon Brooks. It is ironic because Oubre and Brooks have known each other for well over a decade, dating back to their days at a school called Findlay Prep:

• For the second straight game, the Sixers had one 10-day contract player active in Charles Bassey, one inactive in Patrick Baldwin Jr., and activated two-way swingman MarJon Beauchamp, with two-way forward Jabari Walker inactive. Walker's two-way availability has officially expired; the Sixers would have to sign the 23-year-old to a standard contract for him to be able to play again this season. Morey was noncommittal about giving Walker one of the two roster spots currently only filled on a temporary basis:

"I have to reference the CBA we all live under. It's sort of annoying, I'll use the word, that just how it all works, that Jabari can't play for some games here," Morey said. "But he's obviously been part of our ‘next man up’ mentality. I think Coach Nurse has done a good job, when we've had players in and out, which we've had less of this year, but we've still had quite a bit, especially with recent Paul news, things like that. He's been a tremendous next-man-up type contributor, and we hope to have his services, but we do have to weigh optimal use of our scarce two roster spots, and against the other opportunities as well. So that will be written over time, whether or not we do that conversion."

• This was an outstanding game for Bona, whose energy was off the charts, particularly on the offensive glass. The Sixers actually performed considerably better with Bona on the floor than Embiid on Saturday – not a statement that Bona had a better performance, but certainly an indication that his minutes were as productive as they seemed.

• Watford has continued to find more comfort of late; he looks like a player finally getting back to himself again. Because his style is particularly unusual, he is a difficult player to drop into a preexisting rotation and immediately see results. But his size and creation ability – with more frequent doses of scoring lately – are quite helpful.

Up next: The Sixers will conclude their five-game Western Conference road trip on Monday night when they face the Portland Trail Blazers.