PHILADELPHIA – Sixers head coach Nick Nurse sat at his podium and chuckled at the product of some research.

On Wednesday night, the Sixers played host to the Washington Wizards. They did not have a single player ruled out for the game due to an injury or personal reasons, marking the first time since Dec. 18, 2023 that Nurse had his full complement of players available – and, in Nurse's 199th game with the franchise, only the 11th time that has been the case. Kelly Oubre Jr. and Trendon Watford, both upgraded from questionable to probable during the afternoon, were upgraded to available, marking their returns from lengthy absences. Joel Embiid followed the same arc. The Sixers reached full strength.

"It is great," Nurse said. "It is great. Getting them all there, if they get there, is the first step. Getting them all to a level of conditioning and rhythm and their peak performance, that's going to be a ways away yet. But this is the first step in that."

Facing a decimated Washington Wizards team on the second leg of a back-to-back, the Sixers did not make the same mistake that sunk them on Monday night. They handled the Wizards to get back on track after their season-worst loss, notching a 131-110 victory.

Takeaways from Wednesday's action:

Rotation reinforcements

Nurse acknowledged before the game that while Oubre and Watford were both on minutes limits, he did not plan on approaching the upper bounds of those restrictions to begin with. Oubre was coming off an absence of nearly two months, while Watford was sidelined for about six weeks himself.

"It's more of a situation where [it will] probably not even come into play," Nurse said. "I'm not even 100 percent sure I'll use them both, and if I do, [it will] probably be pretty limited tonight. Again, it's been a while, there hasn't been a great chance to get super fast action going. So I think, again, getting them out there and getting them going is in the plans, but I also don't want to totally disrupt some of the rhythm we've got going here as well. So let's get them out there and take one step forward by giving them a few minutes."

While Watford did not see the floor until the game was out of reach – he played the final four minutes and 45 seconds of action – Nurse ended up summoning Oubre rather quickly; he and Grimes were the Sixers' first two substitutions. Oubre received the rousing ovation he deserved:

Oubre played a stint lasting just over six minutes, playing power forward missing both of his shots but grabbing a pair of contested rebounds and nabbing a steal. Oubre returned for the final minute and 56 seconds of the half, but this time he was the shooting guard in a much larger Sixers lineup. When he checked in midway through the third quarter, Oubre was back at the three, his natural position. He shared the floor with Paul George for the first time all season, and that lineup staged a torrid run to open the fourth quarter and definitively put the game out of each. Oubre got back on the board with his first points midway through the final frame when he knocked down a mid-range jumper.

The variety of Oubre's usage right off the bat speaks to the lineup versatility a player of his ilk affords Nurse; he is perhaps the Sixers' most portable player from a positional perspective.

Once the returners are ramped back up, the ramifications for Nurse's starting lineup will be intriguing. Oubre, who was playing the best team basketball of his career as a high-minute starter before spraining the LCL in his left knee, is not a lock to return to the starting five at that point. But Nurse is very open to the idea of resubmitting Oubre into the starting five, something the veteran swingman is very prideful of. The debate appears to boil down to Oubre and Dominick Barlow.

One option, touched on in this week's Sixers mailbag and volunteered as an idea by Nurse before Wednesday's game, is a platoon of sorts.

"It's probably an open conversation," Nurse said. "I would actually like to get to a point where we're a little more fluid, and depending on what the matchups look like, it might be some different lineups we want to start eventually as we go. I've always said that over the years and it never really presented itself very well."

When it behooves the Sixers to be smaller with better defensive versatility and offensive firepower, Oubre could start, with Barlow replacing him in that spot on nights when Nurse believes the Sixers are in need of more size and rim protection. The optionality would be awfully nice to have.

Another dominant performance from the three stars

After a game in which he seemed completely invisible for much of the game and sat out for a considerable chunk of the fourth quarter, it was encouraging to see George give the Sixers some offensive juice early and often in this one. George opened the game with one of his better scoring halves of the season; three of his first-half triples came courtesy of offensive rebounds, and he made a few standout defensive plays, too. It was a very good all-around game for him, including some valuable secondary playmaking.

The Sixers had a brutal opening to the second quarter with a bench-heavy lineup on the floor, but once Maxey and Embiid rejoined the action the Sixers returned to dominance. Embiid, Maxey and George combined to score 54 points in the first half alone. Only eight points were scored by any other Sixers prior to intermission, but the stellar play of those three rendered the shaky depth play irrelevant. Maxey was his typical self, except for that he relied even more on three-point volume than usual. Maxey felt a groove from long range and leaned into it hard, which was completely fine because Embiid had the interior scoring taken care of.

Let Wednesday's game be an example of how far Embiid has come. Nurse spoke about it at length before the game, arguing the most encouraging aspect of Embiid's recent surge is that there are still clearly areas for improvement. One of those was three-point shooting; for as good as he has been of late Embiid entered Wednesday's game shooting 2-for-14 over his last four games. Embiid knocked down a pair of his signature top-of-the-key triples in this one.

A more telling example: when the Sixers and Wizards met in October, second-year big Alex Sarr had his way with Embiid. A long and athletic big with the ability to step out and knock down a jumper, Sarr was the absolute worst possible matchup for an immobile version of Embiid, who was thoroughly outplayed on both ends of the floor that night

Sarr has staged a sophomore breakout since Embiid last saw him, but he was completely outclassed by Embiid in this matchup. Up until a week ago, Embiid almost never scored the easy, overpowering baskets that once fell into his lap. Lately, he has forced the issue to create those lightly-contested interior baskets for himself, and had a particularly tremendous stretch early in the third quarter when he simply decided Sarr was not going to stop him. 

"I always say this: it's our best version if he's out there and he's good," Nurse said before the game. "And hopefully we can continue on with that. Hopefully he'll keep stringing some games up here.

Odds and ends

A few additional notes:

• This was Barlow's best game in a while. After back-to-back contests in which the 22-year-old only played the opening stint of each half, Barlow earned extended run in this one, setting the tone early with his offensive rebounds, making smart plays off of those and chipping in with a bit of opportunistic scoring. Barlow knocked down a corner triple, too, his third in four games.

• In the first half, the Sixers were outscored by 18 points in eight minutes and change with Adem Bona on the floor. It was not all Bona's fault, though he lacked the spark that has recently earned him the backup center spot previously occupied by Andre Drummond. But Nurse likes to ride the hot hand with that spot in his rotation – or stop riding the cold hand – and so it was Drummond out there to back up Embiid in the second half. Drummond knocked down two late corner threes, a fun way to punctuate a victory.

• Since the Sixers officially have notched 20th win of the 2025-26 season in their 35th game on Jan. 7, this is worth noting: last season, they only won 24 games total, with their 20th victory coming in their 49th game of the season on Feb. 4.

Up next: The Sixers will depart for a three-game road trip, with their first game on Friday night when they take on the Orlando Magic. The Sixers and Magic split their battles in Philadelphia early in the season.