PHILADELPHIA — Not only did they find their way to a dramatic 128-122 overtime victory over the Houston Rockets at Xfinity Mobile Arena on Thursday night, but on the two-year anniversary of Joel Embiid’s 70-point performance here against the San Antonio Spurs, the star center scored 3-2 points.
And, most importantly, he played 46 minutes — the most he’s played in a regular season game in more than three years.
“It’s a really big step forward, I think, for sure,” 76ers coach Nick Nurse said afterward.
Perhaps the most obvious sign Embiid is feeling like his old self these days, he’s making jokes about history.
“I was just saying after the game,” Embiid said with a smile, “that maybe I should have a baby on Jan. 22. It seems like a good day.
“So, my wife and I when I get home, we will probably talk [that]start doing those maths and make sure we are trying to have a baby in jan. 22.”
However, for the 76ers, what matters is that a little more than halfway through the 2025-26 season, their star center is starting to return to the form that made him the NBA’s Most Valuable Player in 2023, and he has been one of the top scorers for the past decade before a knee injury limited him to just 19 games last season.
He certainly looked the part this time around, finishing with 32 points and 15 rebounds and 10 assists, both season highs, while shooting 10-for-19 from the floor and 11-for-12 from the free throw line.
While Embiid’s 3-point shooting is still unbelievably off, as he’s shooting a paltry 26.3%, his shooting numbers across the board — 54% on 2-point shots, 86% on foul shots — are in line with his previous numbers, and he’s starting to show defensive moves.
“He plays, he blocks shots, he gets rebounds and that takes a lot out of him,” said teammate Paul George, when asked when he started seeing Embiid come back to him again this season. “So, he’s starting to feel it, he’s getting better and the competitive juice and everything is starting to flow. You can even see him practicing, and you can see that he was coming back, and he was starting to mold into the Joel Embiid that we’ve seen dominate this league.
“So it’s refreshing on a personal level, to deal with injury and how that hurts you. It’s always good to see someone take responsibility.”
The 76ers (24-19) needed all of that from Embiid, and the latest star from newly minted All-Star starter Tyrese Maxey (36 points and 10 assists), to hold off the Rockets (26-16), as Houston forward Kevin Durant finished with 36 points and Houston was also helped by what appeared to be a missed second goal from Max. regulation.
But Philadelphia went on to score five points to open overtime and never trailed in the extra session, allowing the 76ers to recover and avoid falling to 1-4 in their last five games — all at home.
“I think we’re still strong tonight,” Maxey said. “We had to fight the odds … living with them.”
As a result, the 76ers have kept themselves within the top six spots in the Eastern Conference standings and are only 1½ games behind their rivals here on Saturday, the New York Knicks. It’s a far cry from where things were last year, when Embiid was coming off the season, George was in the middle of an injury-riddled campaign himself and the 76ers were hoping for the luck of the lottery to keep their protected sixth draft pick that ended up being superstar VJ Edgecombe with the third pick.
“Yeah,” said George, when asked if this was what he had in mind when he signed with Philadelphia as a free agent 18 months ago. “And not to disparage any team that beat us, but if you look at the losses, a lot of those were very winnable games where we could be up there, top three in the East. But yeah, night and day in terms of what the vision we had last year was, that’s what we saw. Being a team that could be a force and compete. At the end of the day we could compete, so we could compete with anything, and I think when the chips are down, anything which is designed to be.
That starts with keeping Embiid fit and healthy, especially in the wide-open Eastern Conference.
“I’m happy to be consistent,” Embiid said. “Obviously I haven’t been allowed to play back-to-backs, so whenever I can play, I enjoy being consistent and playing every game, actually.”
