The Sixers are 7th in the East after a double overtime win on Sunday night in San Antonio. Tyrese Maxey scored a career-high 52 with Joel Embiid sitting out the second night of the road/road back-to-back:

Tyrese had 7 points in Memphis, so that’s a +45 point increase in the span of 24 hours. Surely there’s a statistic on that somewhere. What’s the highest point total a player has reached after having a single-digit performance the previous night?

The best part is that Maxey has had three 50 pieces this season. He scored 52 last night, 51 in Utah on February 1st, and then 50 against the Pacers way back in November. He and Embiid both have three games this year of 50+ points, which is apparently the first time in NBA history that teammates have had three 50-pieces each in a single season. The only other Sixers to ever have 3+ 50 point games in the same year are Allen Iverson and Wilt Chamberlain. That’s it.

If you watched Sunday night’s game, you know the whole team really gutted out a tough win. Double overtime on the second night of a road/road? Nico Batum hit a huge shot at the end of regulation, only for San Antonio to answer with a triple of their own. Then Nick Nurse dialed up this bit of magic:

I love this play because it gets Maxey going downhill, and that’s the hardest scenario in which you have to guard him. You’re widening the floor by screening at mid court, and if the Spurs overplay the inbound pass, which is what happens, he simply goes backdoor and Wemby is saying “oh shit” by the time Maxey has already received Batum’s inch-perfect pass.

The other brilliant call was this one, when the Sixers generated a look to win it at the end of the first OT period:

First off, Nick Nurse called this timeout as soon as the Spurs missed on the other end. Doc Rivers would have been asleep at the wheel, or blaming the luggage handler for the regulation loss. But Nurse turned a nothing opportunity into a cross-court inbound with 0.8 seconds left that resulted in a catch-and-shoot three that would have ended the game.

That’s the difference between Nurse and Doc. Rivers would have let the clock run out and settled for 2OT. Nurse saw an opportunity and took it. It’s the ability to turn marginal scenarios into meaningful ones, in this case a defensive rebound becomes an extra chance. Then Nurse dials up a lovely SLOB play (sideline out of bounds) to end the game on the spot.

A+ effort from the coach last night. A+ effort from the players. They’re one game behind the Pacers, who beat the Heat in that head-to-head matchup, but hosting Miami in the play-in tournament with the seven seed on the line and a healthy Joel Embiid is a scenario that is perfectly acceptable considering how much time the MVP missed over the winter.

Final shout out goes to the women of San Antonio: