January 20, 2026
Bill Streicher/Imagn Images
Kelly Oubre Jr. had his best three-point shooting game of the 2025-26 season on Tuesday.
PHILADELPHIA – In their ninth back-to-back of the 2025-26 regular season, the Sixers had a chance to win two games in as many nights for the fourth time. But with Joel Embiid out on the second leg of a back-to-back and Paul George surprisingly joining him on the sidelines, the Sixers ran out of gas against a Phoenix Suns team also playing for the second night in a row.
While Tyrese Maxey got off to another slow start, VJ Edgecombe and Kelly Oubre Jr. gave the Sixers significant early lifts to keep their team hanging around. But after a strong push to begin the second half, the Sixers fell apart. The Suns are too good to sputter against for multiple extended stretches, and that is exactly what the Sixers did in their 116-110 loss on Tuesday night.
A smaller, more versatile lineup used by head coach Nick Nurse made somewhat of a push in the fourth quarter, trimming a 17-point lead to single digits and getting the crowd engaged. But ultimately it was too little, too late for a Sixers team that just appeared to not have much left in the tank, and those fans wound up booing as time ran out.
The Sixers have not beaten Phoenix in more than two years. Some takeaways from their latest defeat at the hands of the Suns:
After a first half in which both teams rightfully looked like ones playing for the second consecutive night, the Sixers appeared to be on the verge of flipping their usual script and storming ahead in the third quarter. They opened up the second half on a 13-2 run in under three minutes, with Maxey showing signs of life as a scorer and the team finally playing some spirited two-way basketball.
It did not last long.
Over the final nine minutes and chasing of the third quarter, the Sixers were thoroughly dominated on both ends of the floor, outscored 38-18 by a Suns team suddenly playing with real cohesion. Phoenix is a tough-minded team that is always prepared, and the Sixers did not play with real juice for nearly long enough. They lacked their usual offensive firepower with both Embiid and George sidelined, and those are the nights when Maxey has to look every bit like the All-Star Game starter that he is. Maxey never found any sort of rhythm, and strong scoring nights from Oubre and Edgecombe were not close to enough to winning the Sixers a game against an opponent of this caliber.
They deserve credit for making it a game down the stretch – Adem Bona's defensive activity and Edgecombe's scoring were the critical factors there – but the Sixers did not have enough pop for much of this game, while the Suns really took it to them for a few important chunks of the game. Reserve guard Jordan Goodwin really ate the Sixers' lunch, pestering Edgecombe with ball pressure, making his voice heard with an emphatic block of Dominick Barlow and taunting the home bench after knocking down a corner triple.
Between Goodwin, Devin Booker, Grayson Allen, Oso Ighodaro and local product Collin Gillespie, the Suns simply had more guys show up than the Sixers.
On a team with multiple injury-prone, high-usage players, there are few things as important as having a few players with scalability. There will be nights like Tuesday when Embiid and George are both sidelined, and suddenly there is a whole lot of usage that needs to be replaced. Oubre scored 18 points on Monday in what was his best offensive performance since returning from injury, and facing one of his former teams, the veteran swingman nearly matched that total in the first half alone. He knocked down four triples, all after setting the tone with a steal-and-score:
K9 gets us started! 👏 pic.twitter.com/e7dVEBSFiF
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) January 21, 2026
With Embiid and George in street clothes and Maxey struggling early, it was Oubre keeping the Sixers afloat, with his three-point shooting doing the heavy lifting. He set a season-high early in the third quarter with fifth long-range connection as he helped spark a terrific Sixers run to open the second half:
2️⃣0️⃣ points and counting for @KELLYOUBREJR pic.twitter.com/AnfmJavKMY
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) January 21, 2026
Even if some players have skillsets that make them more natural fits as off-ball role players than Oubre, his value stems from the fact that he does enough of the role-player stuff to be useful on star-laden teams but also has the ability to scale his offensive usage up when his team needs it. Many of his best moments in two-plus seasons in Philadelphia have come in games the Sixers entered short-handed, and it is because of the tremendous rim pressure he can provide.
Oubre is never going to be a high-usage, high-efficiency scorer. But he can get downhill so frequently that on any given night Oubre is capable of turning in a major scoring performance, and in any given possession, Oubre is capable of getting a bucket. His strides to the rim cover an enormous amount of ground, his long arms enable him to get all the way to the rim, he is adept at pulling up for short, paint jumpers and he is skilled at finishing through contact.
Oubre's lack of consistent three-point accuracy has been an issue for his entire 10-year career, and it certainly puts a cap on how large of an offensive workload he can handle on a consistent basis. But the Sixers are a team that can afford less traditional role-playing styles if it means they are better equipped to handle the nights when they are without key offensive figures.
MORE: Why Oubre is the pivot point of Sixers' trade deadline
Some additional notes:
• An interesting revelation from Nurse's pregame media availability: the coaching staff is considering inserting Quentin Grimes into the starting lineup in an effort to help him break out of his lengthy slump. Nurse said his staff has operated under the belief that Grimes is at his best watching the game's opening minutes from the sidelines before entering, but they are now reconsidering that stance. Exactly where Grimes would slot into the lineup is unclear, but the obvious answer would be replacing Barlow and giving the Sixers much better floor spacing at the expense of size.
• With George out, Nurse did not have much choice but to summon Justin Edwards for his first rotation minutes in a while. Edwards played over not just fellow struggling sophomore Jared McCain, but also Trendon Watford. Edwards immediately knocked down a corner triple and added a mid-range jumper, but had a few early defensive miscues. In the second half, Nurse opted to go with Watford in that spot.
• Tuesday's game brought the best pregame bell-ringer of the season: Phillies starting pitcher Cristopher Sánchez, the 2025 National League Cy Young runner-up.
What a way for Matt Cord to return! pic.twitter.com/Ag88qe0nzi
— Adam Aaronson (@SixersAdam) January 21, 2026
Up next: The Sixers will return to action on Thursday night when they play host to the Houston Rockets.
