This is Low Key Crazy...

This just keeps getting crazier. The Sixers are 2-0 in some of the most memorable and dramatic games in recent, if not entire, franchise history, and yet the numbers sort of play it out that either this team isn't playing its best or isn't even playing well. I don't want to... I keep over- and underreacting and kind of missing the mark with all of these, and I'm still kind of all over the place because we are only two games in, but like I said, there's been two incredibly dramatic and interesting games, so it just keeps getting crazier when you then pivot and look at the numbers of playtime stats of buckets of rebound all that kind of stuff let's break that down on this episode of Sixers Digest what's going on everybody Christian Pedersen back with another episode of the show where Sean and I are bringing you guys daily content so as always like subscribe comment share follow to those of you that are new welcome we're glad to have you guys here better late than never i saw this article with uh Sports Illustrated yesterday or this morning when i was scrolling through sorry time has kind of flattened in the last 24 hours of just still i mean i didn't sleep well because of excitement kind of vibes but saw this was like okay i'm curious because Sports Illustrated you know hit or miss and sometimes has good takes sometimes has bad takes the 76ers are resilient is low hanging fruit but i think it kind of segues into the numbers aspect of it and there was so many questions about what is this team capable of in terms of the chemistry and how high can the highs be but if it all goes wrong how low can the lows be and i don't want to say like oh we're guaranteed that we are now seeing that the chemistry issue is entirely behind us and the whole thing has worked out but i do think that it's right to say that two games in we've seen this team had like can i just say that having that dog in them is a stat now and that this team has that dog in them now this team really is just so far ostensibly the five guys who start plus a little smattering of KCP and Anthony Simons. So I think there is some long-term questions of like is that dog athletic and healthy enough to last 82 games and then another 20 or so that it takes to win a championship? We won't know. Like I said, I'm trying not to be crazy overly dramatic and over-reactionary. But then the second one coming of that they can overcome three-point shooting and that's where i kind of you pair the existential of like they're resilient they got that fight they got that motivation they got that focus they didn't give up on the road at msg when they were down on opening nights and the ring ceremony and the vibes and the crowd and lebron's yelling at fans and Embiid's not shooting threes well and then again down 29 and the home fans are okay so but i just sort of thought to myself you know two games is technically like an aggregate sample size so i fired up our our great stat machine at digest sports.com um where you guys can go right now and check out all of this at our fancy new website where our coders are working overtime and this ranks percentile wise where the sixers fit in to everything points rebounds assists will run through all of it and we're only over the 50th percentile on rebounds we're sub right we're 42 and 49 on points and assists and i get that in the ranking of everybody in the nba this is only two games so I'm sure throw that out there I can keep saying that as a disclaimer but I can also say that we have now seen two games of this team not playing particularly well this is all of the shooting stats and I don't need to necessarily make this about like bagging on a guy and say oh wow and Embiid is looking all out of sorts he's cooked um because he started the season you know but whatever it is six of 24 from three or saying like oh uh you know only Maxi is shooting well early but just if you do the in aggregate looking at the whole team all of those numbers are straight up basura that's right if I just told you in a vacuum without you knowing where we were in the season or what the two games had just been or like any of that I just said hey here's how the Sixers are doing right now you'd be like good god sell the team uh ship out all the players everybody must be injured is this Ben Simmons stats alone um are him and Markell like is this him and Markell Fultz you go to the defensive stats the turnovers are pretty good and that was maybe thanks to James Harden last night producing a lot of those but the blocks are okay the the fouls the steal like a little bit better actually on the defensive metrics when compared to the rest of the NBA which I think is kind of I mean ironic maybe being the right word they're given how much we were all talking about how they're going to struggle with rebound they're going to struggle with defense yada yada yada it's so far through two games they're kind of low-key their best their two best features have just been heart and defense when statistically measured against the rest of the NBA and I think that that is really interesting given that if the chemistry issue is not I don't want to say I'm trying to give it some leeway of not being overly hyperbolic and say that like it's perfectly fixed but if the chemistry issue has largely been answered that LeBron seems to be comfortable just being that floor general type and that VJ is just sitting there waiting to be hey I can score nine or ten whenever you need me to but if not I'm just going to be that spark plug that's running around being crazy if Maxi is the rebirth of of Kobe like this all seems to be fitting but in all of it fitting none of those guys are necessarily playing their best ball other than I will say that Maxi's on a good one this season but if none of those guys are playing their best ball plus we haven't had Dean Wade back plus we haven't had Dom Barlow and we're never going to have Ariel Hupordy we're only getting three or four minutes of Jabari Walker and so the bench is basically like I said two guys a Dembona for 10-ish minutes and that's really all we do like it the ceiling is so insanely high I have to say now and I'm not gonna say that they're gonna set the regular season win record just because that kind of stuff comes flying back at me and I don't want to be the guy that cursed the team or something like that. But it's really strange to be sitting here with two truly signature wins where the team technically had to play well to get those wins, but then also having the numbers to kind of back it up and say, well, the team didn't actually play that well though. And I just think that's really, it's almost hard for me to make those two pieces fit together. Granted, the sample size, I think, is going to pan out. Obviously, the stats will get better. Are they going to be top 10 percentile? Are they going to be top five team in shooting and rebound and assists by the end of next week, by the end of November, by the end of the season? I don't want to project out that high, but obviously, when you run through this and then all of the—if you go onto our website, once you get above 80 percent, all these numbers and bars turn green right now none of them are green so when you go from all of that being as trash as it is to being some degree of what i think everybody really is capable of that's absolutely terrifying for the rest of the nba so i'm curious what it's going to take to get the non-chemistry but just the physical like get the rust off in the routine get the shooting percentages better limit some of the like the actual x's and o's side which is all all flipped around from where everybody national media wise thought that the narrative was going to be so i think it's awesome i'm stoked i'm curious what you guys think though in terms of getting this thing really actually massaged out so let me know how you think the team's going to be doing in the next couple of games we got our first of the back-to-backs coming up where we're not going to see Embiid hypothetically we will definitely know more but as always that's why i need to have you to like subscribe comment share follow because we're going to be having daily content for you, no matter how well or bad the season goes or anything in between. Until next time, go Sixers. Have a great rest of your day. Talk to you soon.