No LeBron, no problem yet: Embiid's triple double keeps Philadelphia perfect and Milwaukee winless

Three games in, the Eastern Conference already has its split screen, and Saturday night in Philadelphia framed it perfectly. The 76ers are 3-0. The Bucks are 0-3. The 127-116 scoreline flatters Milwaukee slightly, because every time the game tightened, Philadelphia had three different answers standing on the floor at once, and Milwaukee had to find a fourth quarter miracle from its bench.

The test was real, because the Sixers passed it without LeBron James, who sat out the first night of a back to back to manage his workload. In his place the load spread exactly as this roster was built to spread it. Joel Embiid ran the offence from the middle and finished with 28 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists, the tenth triple double of his career. Jaylen Brown scored 27 on his thirtieth birthday. Tyrese Maxey added 26, rookie VJ Edgecombe pulled down 13 rebounds to go with 17 points, and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope gave them 12 and hard defence off the bench.

Milwaukee kept refusing to go away, which is what makes 0-3 sting more than a blowout would. The Bucks fell behind 10-1 in the opening minutes, fought back to tie the game at 82-82 late in the third quarter, and then watched Philadelphia close the frame on a 15-5 run. In the fourth they cut a sixteen point deficit to 117-114 with just over two minutes left, before Edgecombe grabbed an offensive rebound, Brown hit the three that broke them, and Embiid closed the night with a dunk. Eight Bucks scored in double figures, Jaime Jaquez Jr. leading them with 21 and Kyle Kuzma adding a double double of 14 points and 12 rebounds. Balance without a closer is just sharing the problem evenly.

Context sharpens the split. This is a Bucks side in its first season after the Giannis era, beaten two nights earlier in Chicago as well, and they are losing these games late rather than early, which points at depth and finishing rather than effort. Philadelphia, meanwhile, have now won with James and without him, and their rookie is rebounding like a veteran in the biggest minutes of the night.

Our call is that Philadelphia's start is real and Milwaukee's record is slightly lying, and both things can be true at once. The Sixers have three players who can run a fourth quarter offence, and that is the rarest asset in the league in October. But the Bucks have been within one run of winning twice this week, and a team with eight men scoring in double figures is a trade or a rotation fix away from being annoying rather than winless. Watch Milwaukee's next week, at home to Indiana on Monday: lose that too, at 0-4, and the post Giannis rebuild stops being a project and starts being a verdict the front office has to answer for.