Sixers-Wizards takeaways: Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey pick-and-roll tough to stop; Nic Batum is a great addition

The Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey two-man game is elite.

Nic Batum is intuitive, and his selflessness is a great fit for the 76ers. And he’s a part of an aggressive team that gets the ball and looks for opportunities to attack the paint while improving overall.

Those three things stood out in the Sixers’ 146-128 victory over the Washington Wizards Monday at the Wells Fargo Center.

Here are the takeaways:

The true test will come Wednesday when the Sixers (5-1) play the Boston Celtics in an early-season Eastern Conference showdown for first place. But from what we’ve seen so far, the Embiid and Maxey two-man game has been better than expected.

In Monday’s third quarter, the duo repeatedly ran an empty-side pick-and-roll the Wizards (1-5) couldn’t stop. Embiid had 29 points on 10-for-10 shooting while playing the entire third quarter. The reigning MVP also made all nine of his foul shots. Maxey had eight points on 3-for-4 shooting along with four assists.

» READ MORE: Sixers win fifth straight behind 48 points from Joel Embiid in 146-128 victory over Wizards

Embiid finished with a season-high 48 points along with 11 rebounds despite sitting out the fourth quarter. Maxey added 22 points and a career-high 11 assists and zero turnovers.

“In the first quarter, we ran it one time, and I just saw how open it was,” Embiid said. “And then I just told coach don’t even call nothing anymore. Let’s just keep running it. He just kept finding me, setting screens, finding me, kept scoring. They made an adjustment of icing the screen and then didn’t change anything.

“We stuck to the two-man game. Him going back, me going back at him, and we’re still turning to the same thing. I thought it was great. Any adjustments they made, we just countered it, and I thought it was good.”

In his Sixers debut, Batum showed why he was a beloved teammate with the Los Angeles Clippers.

Batum was extremely productive while admitting he had “no idea what to do out there.”

That was hard to tell by his finishing with 11 points on 4-for-5 shooting — including making 3-of-4 three-pointers — along with two rebounds and one steal. He was a plus-30 in 17 minutes, 27 seconds of action.

» READ MORE: Sixers’ Nic Batum was dealing with a family situation: ‘Sometimes stuff is bigger than basketball’

“Most of it was intuitive,” said coach Nick Nurse. “We did call one or two plays for him after he made a couple [three-pointers]. I think maybe after his third one so most of it was just him, but he does things quickly. That’s one thing that stood out to me tonight. He does things quickly.

“He inbounds the ball quickly. He cuts quickly. He turns and gets his feet set quickly. He does things at a super quick rate, yet under control. That was good. He looked full of confidence. I like some of the things I see defensively, too. He’s a good communicator out there.”

And he’s someone who only cares about winning.

Batum was asked if he has to adapt his mentality and expectations from game to game with the uncertainty of the rotation.

“When you get to know me, I don’t care about that,” he said. “Starting, off the bench, five, 15, 20 minutes, as long as we are winning games, I’m good. So that’s [Nurse’s] job. That’s pretty tough to deal with. So I don’t want to have pressure. Anything he asks me to do, I’m going to do it.”

The Sixers are extremely aggressive on both ends of the floor. Offensively, they attacked the paint from the start and constantly applied pressure on the Wizards’ defense.

There wasn’t a lot of defense from either team. The Sixers shot 56% from the field, and Washington shot 51%. The Sixers still tied their season high of 12 steals.

“So I’m not going to say I’m impressed by that tonight,” Nurse said of the defense. “But I have been in stretches that we’re working. And probably if I had to pick something, I just think I’m learning a lot about them, and they’re getting better.

“We’ve seen a lot of different stuff and just making little tweaks to things that we are able to pick up quickly.”