Tyrese Maxey finishes with a season-high 45 points as the 76ers earn their 1st win of the season.
INDIANAPOLIS — Early as it was, the season’s first weekend had begun feeling a little late to the Indiana Pacers and the Philadelphia 76ers.
At 1-1 and 0-2 respectively, neither team had played well yet, setting up their matinee at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Sunday for much scratching, plenty of clawing, and no small amounts of urgency and desperation.
Sixers coach Nick Nurse, with center Joel Embiid and wing Paul George still sidelined, hadn’t liked his healthy players’ rhythm or effort. Rick Carlisle, his Indiana counterpart, felt his team lacked an edge and considered the Pacers’ home opener potentially “an all-time suckers game.”
It took five extra minutes before one team walked off feeling somewhat better about itself. That was Philadelphia, winners mostly due to guard Tyrese Maxey’s 45 points. Here are five takeaways from the Sixers’ 118-114 victory:
1. Tidy game turned big, sloppy
For 46 minutes, this was a standard-issue tussle between two Eastern Conference hopefuls, each playing through issues, swapping a narrow lead for much of the fourth quarter.
But the final two minutes of regulation and the overtime got sloppy, silly and sideways. There were three challenges (each of which went Indiana’s way), a technical foul on Nurse with 102 seconds left, and assorted physical gaffes and mental mistakes that made the outcome almost random.
The last 17 minutes of play took a full 60 minutes in real time.
Nurse got T’d up by crew chief Mitchell Ervin for jawing too long about the clock after the refs verified via replay that Myles Turner had hoisted an airball. It might have been costly, except Haliburton missed the free throw.
The Indiana guard missed twice more with a chance to force a second OT. But once Haliburton missed the first at 116-114, five seconds left, he had to intentionally miss the second. The Sixers rebounded, and that was that.
In between, Philadelphia failed to foul to protect its 105-102 lead as regulation ticked away. Haliburton, fishing for free throws, instead awkwardly flung in a 3-pointer from the left wing. At a similar point in overtime, the Sixers at least did foul with a 115-112 lead.
2. Tyrese vs. Tyrese
Neither Maxey nor Haliburton had played well in his team’s first two games, setting up an individual matchup in which the All-Star point guard who performed better Sunday likely would carry his team to victory.
Maxey got it done. After shooting 16-for-54 (29.6%) against the Bucks and the Raptors, he had another volume performance. He went 14-for-32 for those 45 points. Thirty-eight came after halftime, 24 in the fourth quarter plus overtime.
“Things weren’t going for him early on, but he never stops,” teammate Eric Gordon said. “Because when he gets going, he’s a mega-problem.”
Said Maxey: “Everybody on our bench, coaches and players included, after I missed my first seven [or] however many I missed, they just said ‘Do not stop shooting.’ They were like, ‘Dude, you know who you are.’”
Honoring the home market’s heritage, the Pacers’ game ops crew sometimes plays vroom-vroom race car sound effects. But it was the visitor Maxey laying down rubber most of the afternoon.
3. Haliburton still looks indecisive
After breakthrough, Pacers adjust to being the hunted.
A scoreless performance at New York on Friday prompted a predictable and reasonable response Sunday: Haliburton worked harder to get into the lane, scoring a little more easily from inside or at the line.
It worked for a while — the Pacers’ young leader even had a moment when he faked Sixers guard Kyle Lowry into sprawling past the sideline, then sidestepped into an open 3-pointer.
By the end, Haliburton shot 4-for-9 from inside the arc and an identical 4-for-9 from outside. He missed three of his five foul shots and had three turnovers to just four assists. Indiana was nine points worse in the 37:18 he played.
4. Time to tighten the rotation?
Philadelphia at least knows the cavalry is coming. Embiid and George, both nursing knee issues, are expected back soon.
The Pacers, by contrast, are going to have to dig themselves out of the hole in which they find themselves. They’re healthy. Perhaps too healthy, with Carlisle trying to play 10 or 11 players most nights.
The OT session put some extra minutes into Sunday’s game, but there are reasons many NBA teams try to stick to nine-man rotations. Especially at this time of year, players are trying to get themselves into some sort of flow or rhythm.
Then again, the Pacers’ starting five haven’t planted much of a flag, getting outscored 193-104 in the past two games.
There’s a crowd in Indiana’s backcourt. Reserve T.J. McConnell has been the best playmaker so far, while Aaron Nesmith and Bennedict Mathurin are tag-teaming the small forward spot.
Rebounding is a problem too. The Pacers got pounded on the glass (54-37) by a Sixers team that had gotten pounded on the glass (54-28) in Toronto on Friday. Philadelphia turned 20 offensive rebounds into 25 second-chance points. You’d have thought Embiid and his size advantage had shown up after all.
5. Big man, slick hands
Andre Drummond, the Sixers’ backup center plugging Embiid’s spot, had 17 rebounds. No shocker there — the big man led the NBA in rebounding four times while with Detroit. But Drummond’s two late steals in regulation were essential.
First, he poked Andrew Nembhard’s dribble away, triggering a fast-break bucket by Caleb Martin. Moments later, he stripped Haliburton as the point guard was rising for a shot.
The 6-foot-11, 279-pound Drummond, 31, ranks second among active NBA players in rebounding. But he is also ninth this season in steals and has finished in the top 20 in that category five times.
“It’s all about timing,” Drummond said. “When I see the guard come off, they usually try to see what I’m going to do first, whether I’m going to be aggressive or not. Once they take that lazy dribble, I go for it.”
Said Maxey: “He’s always dropping, dropping, dropping, then he swipes. When he was with Chicago, he got me a couple times.
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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