Instant observations: Sixers begin back-to-back with brutal blowout bludgeoning

It does not get any worse than that.

The Sixers lost to the Charlotte Hornets, 130-93, on Monday afternoon in what was, from start to finish, their worst performance of the 2025-26 campaign. They did not have the requisite effort, intensity, focus or execution to even compete.

There was plenty of reason to anticipate a difficult contest for the Sixers in Charlotte. The Hornets are a surging team, one much better than its record indicates. They have tons of youthful energy and three-point shooting. They are coached well. They were just about at full strength, while the Sixers were without Joel Embiid and Paul George, sitting out on the front end of a back-to-back. Speaking of, the Sixers were already preparing to board a flight back to Philadelphia because they have another game on Tuesday.

For all of those reasons, it was easy to imagine the Sixers losing this game. But no list of extenuating circumstances can excuse a total beatdown like this. Takeaways from a miserable day of Sixers basketball:

The worst game of the 2025-26 season

The Sixers had a 41-point loss to the Orlando Magic on their home floor in November, but even that obliteration did not feel as bad as this one point. Their offense was totally lifeless; Tyrese Maxey played his worst game of the season and looked more fatigued than he has all season. He is still carrying a workload in terms of minutes which is historic. Jared McCain and Quentin Grimes both stagnating (or worse) has made it harder for Sixers head coach Nick Nurse to justify taking Maxey off the floor when the team is not fully healthy.

There was no resistance from the Sixers defensively, either, they never came close to figuring out Charlotte's spaced-out offense or matching the Hornets' energy and intensity. This game was functionally over midway through the second quarter, but there was never even a brief spurt of possessions in which the Sixers looked like they were playing well enough to win an NBA game.

Not a single member of the Sixers played well for their standards, maybe save for Kelly Oubre Jr., the only player on the team who was able to initiate any sort of efficient possessions offensively. Just about everyone else was notably bad. One player's struggles remain most ominous and confusing, but

Signs of life from Jared McCain?

For the first time in 15 days, McCain played in the first quarter of a game on Monday afternoon. McCain had not been in Nurse's rotation at all for the better part of two weeks, and as the team reached full strength it became difficult to justify anything else. All along the Sixers have tempered expectations for McCain's production, arguing he needed consistent minutes for a prolonged stretch so he can eventually progress into the player who became the favorite to win the NBA Rookie of the Year Award last season before a torn meniscus got in the way.

More than two months later, McCain's minutes remained futile on both ends of the floor. He had next to no shot creation ability for himself or others; he has never been a stellar athlete but had even less explosion than usual and could not generate off-the-dribble advantages. His defense is a major concern, not just because of the athletic deficiencies but also McCain's lack of size and length.

In some ways, McCain's struggles this season are easy to understand, even if they have grown far more pronounced than anybody would have anticipated. But his continued inability to knock down open three-point shots is legitimately stunning at this point. McCain has elite touch and virtually unlimited range. It has been his calling card for many years, dating back to his time as a five-star recruit in high school. To this day, his pregame workout sessions feature tremendous displays of three-point accuracy:

Jared McCain corner three-point shooting: pic.twitter.com/4X3FA7nPoU

— Adam Aaronson (@SixersAdam) January 22, 2026

In games, these shots will just not fall. Late in the first quarter on Monday, McCain missed badly on a corner triple just like the ones above. The ball found him wide open on the wing after an offensive rebound, and that shot rimmed out. McCain entered Monday's game shooting 32.3 percent on long-range attempts, and no matter how much revisionism surrounds current discourse pertaining to him, McCain missing so many open looks is just unfathomable.

A cruel play a bit later: McCain came off a screen, raised up for a three and knocked it down. But the shot was wiped out by a moving screen call. Immediately, McCain was summoned to the bench. It is the perfect representation of what his second NBA season has been.

But some hope arrived in garbage time, and it was the only redeeming aspect of Monday's game. McCain finally knocked a three-point shot down in the fourth quarter, a make which trimmed Charlotte's lead to…. 47 points. But three more triples followed. They did not matter in terms of any game results, but maybe this was what McCain needed to at least get the ball rolling to some degree.

Odds and ends

Two additional notes:

• While 10-day contract signee Charles Bassey was not in Charlotte on Monday afternoon – likely due to weather-related travel concerns – Jabari Walker and Dominick Barlow were both able to play because Bassey officially put pen to paper on Monday morning and joined the Sixers' standard roster. That was all the Sixers needed to continue activating Walker and Barlow.

• Nurse has explained that when Embiid is sidelined, he prefers to start Andre Drummond and bring Adem Bona off the bench, even if Bona is ahead of Drummond in the center hierarchy at the time. The rationale: teams generally go smaller when they turn to their second units, and Bona is a better fit to face those lineups. Not that it would have changed the outcome of the game, but perhaps Nurse should have observed on Monday that Charlotte starts an undersized energy big, Moussa Diabaté, with 7-foot-1 rookie Ryan Kalkbrenner coming off the bench, and given Bona the starting nod.

Up next: The Sixers will now return home for three games, but they have to get to Philadelphia quickly: they will play host to the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday night in the second leg of this back-to-back.

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