The MVP chants remained at the Xfinity Mobile Arena Friday night even if their usual recipient wasn’t in attendance.
Perhaps tongue was closer to cheek than in the past. But on the first night of the season that the 76ers were forced to play without Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid gave a glimpse of the dominance of the recent past.
Embiid scored 39 points, and Paul George and VJ Edgecombe filled the void left by Maxey with their offensive aggression in a 115-105 win over the Indiana Pacers.
Embiid logged 31:56 on the court. He shot 12-for-23 from the field and 13-for-18 from the line for 39 points, plus nine rebounds and three assists.
It’s not just his first 30-point game of the season, but his first of 2025, the last a 37-point outing on Dec. 30, 2024. It’s his highest scoring game since dropping 50 on the New York Knicks in Game 3 of their 2024 playoff series.
“I just made shots today,” Embiid said. “Those are the same shots that I missed against the Lakers. It's all about making shots. You make shots, it looks good. You don't make them, it looks bad.”
The imperative that Embiid and his teammates responded to was the absence of Maxey, ruled out for the first time this season with an illness. The NBA minutes leader left 31.5 points unaccounted for. The committee that would replace it would have to be headed by Embiid, maybe for some people just to see if the two-time NBA scoring champ still could do it.
Embiid has looked at best rusty offensively in his three games back from a nine-game absence for inflammation in his right knee. He’s averaged 15.3 points in 28.3 minutes in that stretch, shooting 31.3 percent from the field and 0-for-14 from 3-point range.
The Sixers got a runway to prepare for Maxey’s absence, and they got a Pacers team that has heated up moderately but still started the season 2-16. The Sixers haven’t played since Sunday, with a solid four days to rest, recover and refocus on principles.
Embiid spent the time working with the team but also with personal coach Drew Hanlen, particularly on his shooting. That included accommodating an issue in his finger that he brought up unprompted but insisted is minor.
He missed his first three 3-point attempts Friday, then canned a step-back triple over Garrison Matthews with 1.6 seconds left in the first half to end the string of misses at 17 and send the Sixers into the break up 63-58.
“Out of all the 3s that I take, that’s the one that I make, the hardest one, off the dribble,” he said. “I know it’ll be fine. Something hasn't felt right in my hand lately. So I had a couple of days to recover and put in some work with my guy Drew, so just having that consistency on the court helps a lot. It was just a little thing with my finger, but that keeps getting better.”
Joel Hans Embiid! 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/uMQV7rLymd
Embiid was quiet early. He had four points in the first quarter, then was more assertive in a seven-minute stretch of the second in which he scored 15 points. He got rolling by rolling mid-range areas and hitting open jumpers that the Indiana defense gave him.
Coach Nick Nurse harps on variety with Embiid. Instead of him triggering offense solely from the top of the key, they got him into actions with different guards and found spots where he could bully defenders down low, either getting to the rim or to the line.
In a third quarter where he scored 14 points, he got downhill more than he has at any point this season, hitting the 30-point barrier with 6:47 left in the frame.
To Nurse, that willingness to go off the bounce, the ability to summon a quick burst and the desire to court contact is a barometer of when Embiid is feeling right.
“He's best when he's driving,” Nurse said. “I thought he drove it a lot to draw the fouls early. That puts them in a tough situation of how to play him. And probably the best thing about it all, 39 is great, but it came in a lot of different schemes they threw at him. And I thought he read the different stuff pretty good most of the night.”
Embiid wasn’t the only one pushing the pace early on. Edgecombe scored 14 points in the first quarter on the way to 22. Since he scored 34 points in his NBA debut, this was just his third game of 20 or more. In five games since returning from a three-game absence with calf soreness, he had averaged just 10.6 points.
Edgecombe has, early in his NBA career, tended to be deferential around lead guards like Maxey and Quentin Grimes. Friday, he accepted the mission to push the issue.
“I just think he got himself mentally prepared to understand he needed to provide a complete package tonight,” Nurse said. “And he got aggressive early. Some of the stuff we tried to polish up got him some baskets early, some execution out of press-breakers and things like that that we've been working on. I think that got him going. I love the pull up 3s in transition. That just shows how confident he's playing.”
George had eight points, three rebounds and two assists in his first stint. He finished with 23 points, five boards, five assists and a plus-19 rating.
Most importantly, he supplied a steadying presence at both ends of the court. That’s always him defensively, but he took on the Maxey role of having the ball in his hands a lot late, especially in a fourth quarter when Nurse saved the last minutes of his restriction for the final 4:22. He re-entered with the 76ers down 2, then saw them finish on a 15-3 run the rest of the way.
“He’s showing that he is a guy who can score and create his own shot, both from 2 and from 3,” Nurse said of George. “If he's going to sneak in a few drives, which he had late, it's going to make it tougher if he can score it at all three levels. But I thought he did a good job of settling things down.”
The defense was where it needed to be, especially in holding the Pacers to 15 fourth-quarter points. Dominick Barlow supplied 10 points and eight rebounds, including a layup assisted by George with 3:43 left that put the 76ers up for good. Grimes had 10 points and lockdown late defense. All but 11 points came from the starters.
Embiid went a long way toward sealing the game by cleaning up a Grimes miss with 2:58 left and putting it back while being fouled, the free throw giving the 76ers a 108-102 lead.
Like everything else about the 76ers in 2025-26, none of that works to its fullest potential unless there’s some measure of brilliance from Embiid. He summoned some Friday night – not necessarily for doubters or for his own self-belief, but because it’s what the moment called for.
“That’s for those people that don’t think I can do it,” he replied to a question of if it his performance was a statement to anyone. “But I can’t change that opinion. It feels good. Playing like that, I feel like I can do it.”
