The Sixers needed every bit of overtime to score a 116-114 victory over the Orlando Magic on Sunday, overcoming a dismal offensive start to put another W on the board.

Here's what I saw.

The Good

• Lost in Philadelphia's blowout loss to the Brooklyn Nets — Tobias Harris looking half-decent on offense for the first time since James Harden joined the lineup. It was easy to write that off as a meaningless outing because of the broader circumstances, but seeing Harris looking even slightly comfortable was a welcome sight.

The Sixers didn't take long to look for Harris on Sunday evening, running the first possession of the game for him and cashing in for two points, with Harris shooting an easy one over Jalen Suggs. That would become a theme of the first half, with Harris exploiting matchups against most of Orlando's smaller perimeter defenders. In fact, if it wasn't for Harris' success in those situations, the Sixers might have gone into halftime getting absolutely smoked by the Magic, so it was a blessing that he was finally able to find his footing.

What I loved seeing just as much as that was Harris gripping it and ripping it from three early on, perhaps because he was already in a rhythm from the post touches. There was a heat check three he took early in this game that felt good to see out of him even though he ended up missing it, because confidence has been in short supply for Harris lately. As Embiid and Harden have both noted publicly, they'd rather live with aggressive misses than passive, clock-wasting pump fakes.

All of that led to Harris' big moment in overtime, with the Sixers short on hope and on the verge of a loss in Orlando. Standing in the corner with waiting arms, Harris took a Harden kick-out and never thought twice, hitting the shot that would ultimately push the Sixers to a tight road win.

His line in this game was positively sensational when you stack it up against the rest of his teammates. Harris popped up when his teammates needed him most, ultimately bailing out some poor showings elsewhere on the team.

• The box score overstates Embiid's performance in this game, and he'd better hope his shooting boots are at home in Philly, ready to slip on for his MVP battle with Nikola Jokic on Monday night. But even if this was a "down" night for him, Embiid still managed to string together some effective stretches of basketball, and he slowly drifted back toward the style that had Philly firing on all cylinders for about two months.

You might not believe it given that he was still able to get up quite a few shots against the Magic, but Embiid made a more concerted effort to playmake out of the post against the Magic, keeping his head up and looking for his shooters instead of forcing up junk all night. Georges Niang was a big beneficiary yet again, hitting a pair of spot-up threes that came on direct passes out of the post from the big man.

When Embiid was actually playing like a big man, putting his shoulder into guys and going up strong, that's when he looked his best all night. There were multiple occasions where he brought back memories of Moses Malone, catching his own offensive rebounds off of the glass and eventually scoring by being bigger, meaner, and more skilled than the guys trying to keep up with him.

That approach around the basket helped Embiid shrug off poor shooting for a lot of this game, with the big man sustaining his scoring at the free-throw line, as has often been the case this season. There was just enough shotmaking from the big man to help get this one over the line in crunch time — after a Harden stepback under five minutes to play in the fourth, it was Embiid's turn to hit a monster jumper, canning one and then showing the emotion on his face after Philadelphia finally got back in front:

The offensive struggles continued deep into overtime, with Embiid and the rest of his teammates running on fumes late. But with Philadelphia in need of a stop to keep the game in reach, Embiid reached back for a hellacious block of Cole Anthony at the rim, 

On a bad night, Embiid is still capable of putting up an absurd line, as he has proven many times over this year. They needed every last bit of it to escape with a victory.

• On a team full of reluctant shooters, Georges Niang's quick trigger is a cool, refreshing drink. If he finds himself open, there's not going to be an extra pass, there's not going to be a moment of hesitation, there's simply going to be a 40 percent three-point shooter putting the shot up and living with the result. It feels insane that a professional basketball team in 2022 is in such short supply of guys like Niang, but man, does he mean a lot to this group.

Lately, it has felt like Niang is on the floor for every single big run the Sixers go on, whether he's the guy making shots or simply providing a credible shooting threat to open it up around Embiid, Harden, or anybody else he's sharing the floor with. That figures to continue because he knows what he's supposed to do and he does it well.

(Something to keep in your back pocket — Rivers has continued to go to Niang when Thybulle struggles, playing a bigger and slower lineup in second halves as it suits him. Perhaps we'll see bigger bursts of that in the future.)

• The Sixers are going to have to do something about these slow starts eventually because it's very hard to win an NBA title if you're constantly digging out of self-created holes in the second halves of games. But if you want a silver lining from this trend of poor starts and much better finishes, this team has proven capable of repeatedly and routinely turning it up when it matters in the second half. If they can ever start playing a full 48 minutes at a high level, look out.

The Bad

• Saying James Harden has looked like a different player over the last two games would be putting it lightly. After getting punked by the Nets in Thursday's reunion, Harden was a mess for a lot of Sunday's follow-up performance, looking slow and indecisive against a team he should have no trouble dominating.

Harden's lack of burst has been pretty obvious even when he has had it going this season, and it gets highlighted more when teams just play him straight up and don't try to force the ball out of his hands. Guys who are very ordinary on the defensive end — hell, guys who are outright bad on the defensive end — are having a decent amount of success by giving him a bit of cushion and sitting back on his drives, buying enough time for the weakside rim protector to come in and block his shot.

Honestly, if I was an opposing head coach, I would single cover Harden until he shows he can routinely get the corner against single coverage. You can see the passing genius shine through whenever they're trapping him and giving him an opening elsewhere on the floor. When Orlando made him try to win in isolation, he had a much harder time. Too early to say if that's a product of his legs or if he simply wasn't that interested in getting up for this game.

What you can say is that Doc Rivers isn't exactly optimizing lineups around him. Truly, I don't envy the task he has in front of him, because every choice comes with pretty significant downside. But putting two non-shooters on the floor with Harden (in this case, DeAndre Jordan and Matisse Thybulle) is a thing that probably shouldn't happen, and it led to horrific moments with the bench groups that had nothing to do with Harden, even if he's out there leading those groups.

The Sixers need to find some way to get Harden going again, perhaps by leaning harder into DHOs coming from the right side of the floor to get him a running start heading toward an Embiid screen. 

Underneath all of that, it felt like Harden was the victim of his own unselfishness on Sunday. There was a jump pass out of an open three in the first half that I simply couldn't believe he attempted, and another questionable decision early in the fourth that at least got Niang an open three. Philadelphia's offense finally began to perk up when Harden made a more concerted effort to attack the basket late in this game, and that was not a coincidence. This guy has one of the best scoring resumes in NBA history, and he should act like it. 

• The Sixers need to be a high-powered offense for a lot of reasons, and their porous defense ranks near the top of the list. If they can get set and take advantage of Joel Embiid's rim protection, you'll give them a chance to stop teams even with suboptimal matchups elsewhere on the floor. But they basically have no chance in transition, where other teams consistently outrun them, and Orlando had an absolute field day against the Sixers whenever they pushed the pace following a Sixers miss.

Philadelphia's first half was as ugly as it gets on offense, with their stars stinking it up to the tune of a combined 5/23 from the field. The synergy they had in the first few games 

• When Harden and Embiid combined to shoot 37 free-throw attempts against the Knicks in their second game together, that number felt representative of New York's inability to guard them. They put the Knicks through hell trying to defend pick-and-rolls, forcing a lot of misguided slaps and take fouls to prevent Philadelphia from getting easy buckets.

The last couple of games, that duo has been far too concerned with trying to manufacture free-throw attempts. Embiid is getting deep position, a major positive, and then flailing instead of trying to go up through contact. Harden is picking up his dribble long before he has a real chance to score at the rim, and the officials are not rewarding him for trying to sell any contact he feels on his way to the rim.

On one possession in the third quarter, Embiid spent so much time on the other end of the floor griping about a no-call that Wendell Carter Jr. was able to score an uncontested look at the rim eight seconds later, with Embiid only barely getting back into the picture by the time the basket was scored. Working the officials is a valuable, borderline necessary trait for star players. They have swung way too far toward grifting and complaining the last couple of games, though.

• There is a non-zero chance that Matisse Thybulle is completely unplayable in a playoff series. The lack of progress he has made on offense since being drafted is a big problem, and having him on the floor in any capacity often lets opposing teams (even opposing teams with poor defenses!) off of the hook. Even if the initial action creates a breakdown in the defense, the guy who is guarding Thybulle can often just step into space to help, unbothered by whatever Thybulle might be able to do if they leave him alone. If a successful offensive possession banks on him hitting a three, the opponent is going to take their chances. And it gets much worse when he tries to self-create or score on the move, as he did several times in the first half against Orlando.

It has been even easier to focus on how bad his offense with Thybulle struggling to make a high-level impact on defense lately. He has done little to stop the bleeding for Philadelphia's terrible perimeter defense, and while that's a shared failing between Thybulle and his teammates, he's in the lineup to begin with because he's supposed to help fix that issue. Thybulle's block of Cole Anthony in overtime was big time, but that was a rare highlight in a game full of nothingness. In fact, he nearly erased the positive impact of that play by taking a stupid reach-in foul on Wagner to put him at the line with a chance to tie the game and nine seconds left on the clock. Those brain cramps are far too common.

The people who want him attached to Harden's minutes so that Harden can get more out of him are missing the point, I think. You want to maximize James Harden on this team, not use him to get incremental improvements from role players, if you can get incremental improvements in the first place. This was a particularly bad game, but I still have my doubts on Thybulle conceptually. And the coach seems like he does, too, because Thybulle was nowhere to be found when it counted.

(The next time he stands in the lane with Embiid trying to post up, Rivers should pull him from the game. One thing to be there on a cut, but Thybulle as a stationary guy in the middle of the lane might be the most useless player in the league. When Danny Green is healthy, I'm curious if Thybulle is able to keep that starting spot.)

• This team is not going to win many games shooting under 40 percent from the field, put it that way.

The Ugly

• DeAndre Jordan is so bad, man. Handing him the backup center job with no competition is absolute malpractice. He either misses or isn't interested in closeouts, doesn't time jumps well around the rim, struggles to defend guys in space, and has looked just as bad in Philly as he did at his last two stops. I tried to tell you guys he was cooked, but not everybody wanted to listen. Let's hope somebody who has decision-making power notices before the season ends.

• I have no idea what Philadelphia's ATO on the final possession of regulation was supposed to accomplish, but it could not have been executed worse unless they turned the ball over. Dreadful stuff. 

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