MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The basketball gods may have given the Philadelphia 76ers a mulligan. Either that, or Sixers executive Daryl Morey and his front office and scouting team are pretty good at this whole drafting thing.

But let’s keep it 100. The Sixers didn’t know exactly what they had in VJ Edgecombe when they selected him out of Baylor with the No. 3 pick in June. They knew about the athleticism and the defense. They thought he would eventually be pretty good at handling the ball and creating for himself off the dribble. They, and the rest of the NBA, thought he was a raw offensive prospect and that his shooting needed to come a long way. He was a high-upside pick, but he was thought to be a player who needed time to develop.

After Philadelphia’s 139-136 overtime win over the Memphis Grizzlies on Tuesday, it’s obvious that Edgecombe is further along than almost anyone’s wildest imagination. It wasn’t just his game-winning 3-pointer in overtime. It wasn’t just his 25 points and six rebounds, or the 13 points he scored in the fourth quarter alone. It’s the aura. When you watch Edgecombe play, you see that he has it. The intangibles that the special ones show early in their career. It’s not something that can be measured in a box score, or on a stat sheet, or by analytics. You have to watch him. And when you do, you just know.

“VJ has been telling us for three weeks that he deserves to shoot a game-winner,” Philadelphia guard Tyrese Maxey said. “I said, OK. I trust him. I knew he would shoot it with confidence. He took the shot, and he made it. We’re blessed to have him. You can thank the basketball gods, or Daryl Morey, or whoever. He’s got a chance to be a special player.”

On a night when Maxey scored 34 points, when Joel Embiid scored 34 points and grabbed 10 rebounds and handed out eight assists, and when Memphis star Ja Morant dropped 40, Edgecombe was the best player on the floor in crunch time by a mile.

He scored 20 of his 25 points in the second half and overtime. He made two consecutive 3-pointers with four minutes remaining in regulation to give Philadelphia a seven-point advantage. He made big shots when the 76ers were on life support and facing a fourth consecutive loss. And when Maxey and Embiid needed help down the stretch, Edgecombe was there to take over.

The final play was originally supposed to be a flat set, with Maxey going one-on-one at the top of the action and the rest of the Sixers on the floor flat on the baseline. But Maxey called the audible when the 76ers broke the timeout huddle. He told Edgecombe to set the guard-guard screen and to see how the Grizzlies’ defended it. The action caught Morant in a bind, and he couldn’t recover to Edgecombe quickly enough after giving initial help on Maxey. As soon as Edgecombe made the catch, he let the shot go.

VJ EDGECOMBE GAME-WINNER.

WHAT A CLUTCH SHOT BY THE ROOKIE 🤯 pic.twitter.com/9AhyF5E43B

— NBA (@NBA) December 31, 2025