The Sixers have a Golden Opportunity Tonight...

The Sixers have an absolute golden opportunity tonight against the Bulls. Let's get you ready for the game to start the action this week and why I think there are a lot of different layers of subtext to go on through this game, but a lot of great opportunities to not just improve our record, but improve as a whole team. What's going on, everybody? Christian Pedersen back with another episode of Sixers Digest, the show where we're bringing you daily content, pre, post, in-between games, all those other great things. So as always, if you want to like, subscribe, comment, share, follow, all those YouTube-y buttons, go ahead. Greatly appreciated to have you doing it. Let's talk about tonight's game against the Bulls. Now, the Bulls represent... Another NBA team, I don't want to discredit anybody and say, oh my gosh, this one's a cupcake. But I think they represent our opportunity to get some lead early and get some different permutations and different guys, some looks. Or they represent a chance for Tyrese Maxey to get 136 points tonight. One of the two is going to hopefully be the truth for the Bulls. Just the general numbers to show you, they have not necessarily been It's fantastic this season at 1-5. A lot of their metrics pan out that it is not a 1-5 via them dropping close ones or that they just got some bad calls. It's a team that is, let's call it generously, they're in a rebuild right now. For the Bulls, the two main players that I think we all need to pay attention to and watch this season. Number one being the semi-ageless wonder, Norman Powell. He has found yet another home and is always going to be a dangerous NBA player that will, I'm assuming, get the... Primary defensive assignments tonight, so look for Tyrese Maxey, and actually, if you look at the numbers, LeBron is having himself one of the best defensive seasons, both in his career, and he is one of the best defenders in the entirety of the NBA. The other person to watch closely for the Bulls is Josh Giddey. know him. His numbers this season have been fairly outstanding as well, but beyond that, it's a little bit of a drop-off on both the offensive and defensive end for the Bulls. At 1-5, they are a chance for us, like I said, to get after it, another dub, but also, I think, move around some of the pieces that if we can finally get a game where we can get a lead and And I know this might be crazy talk for me to be out there and be like, we're going to be up 10 in the first quarter and actually not give the other team a run to come back and take a lead. And then we're gonna have to come back and win finally in the fourth quarter. But if we can get up early, I would love to see this be something where Get some LeBaron filing minutes. He's been a little rough around the edges. He has been in only small select windows. I would like to just see more of, A, opportunities for him to develop and get better, because I fundamentally believe that Mike D'Antoni made a pretty good choice there. But also, B, I just kind of want to see more of what we have. Some of you guys have talked about trading LeBaron already for a backup center. I just. I think one way or another, we just need to know and see and let him develop a little bit more. And so hopefully getting up early and getting him some opportunities would be great. The other thing to pay attention to that I'm saying golden opportunity-wise is that Joel Embiid is listed as questionable tonight. Him and Don Barlow are going to be out. Embiid as questionable. I think that this is load management 101, but this is what I'm talking about of a golden opportunity. If we can take a team that we are heavily favored against, which if you check the Kalshi markets right now, this is the largest, the most favored the Sixers have been at any point this season. And as always, thank you to Kalshi for sponsoring this video. If you would like to sign up using the code DIGESTNBA, Kalshi will hook you up with $55 when you trade your first $25 in options. If we look at that. We just have a chance to rest Embiid and either get the backups in and get them some minutes or if we don't want to let it be that competitive, just let Tyrese Maxey go crazy. His career numbers against the Bulls have been fantastic. His numbers all season have been fantastic and just put up his season high last game and now he's got LeBron back. This could go This could go that way. One of you guys in the comments section after my MVP video said, oh, you know, Maxey's going to lack the 40-plus point games that a lot of the other MVP candidates are. If you don't want to do the route of peace, love, and kumbaya, let's get all the backups in, this could be an opportunity to just be like, Maxie, you did it really well against Charlotte. Now let's do it against the Bulls, but also with LeBron out there to help. And for the LeBron front as well, I would be curious if this can't be Thank Give me like, again, sorry, I'm so excited to hit the mic there. If you can get up early and then get LeBron into a situation where he plays in the high teens, low 20 of minutes and isn't forced to be out there being a heat-seeking missile, you. chasing down blocks and really like laboring, but if he can just be assists and playing his like, within that kind of normal part of the bell curve for his effort level. It's not a load management game, but it's certainly not 29-32 type minutes for LeBron. So that's what I'm saying. We have this great opportunity to find that sweet spot where I think that the Sixers can pick up not only another dub, but like one where we get to see Taco Fall and Adem Bona and LeBron Phyland and Jabari Walker and all of those guys. The keys to me being that we got to just get after Chicago's defense. You got to. Limit the turnovers. We're already getting so much better at the turnovers. They kind of peaked, it felt like, at that Cleveland game. I get it early in the season, but if we're going to have some of the bench pieces moving in and out, we've got to just make sure we keep playing clean basketball. We can get those two and then get rebounding. That'll be the, we're going to. That's a dead horse that I'm going to keep beating every single game, but if the rebounding can be something where this can be our first opportunity I have an opportunity to... Great. But also, I've said it all season, if we can keep it within five of the opponent. Now, if Embiid's going to be out, it certainly represents a different version of that challenge. But Embiid out, hopefully, my case for putting Taco Fall in today is not that Taco's going to be this elite game changer who is out there just picking up boards left and right. Taco, Adem Bona, Jabari Walker, splitting time at center, allows LeBron to go out and be not a center and be actually his best authentic self. And then I think there's just kind of this little bit of a domino effect of, even if it's just a bleeping cardboard cutout. B minus backup center kind of vibes that we have all night. It's that plus then the rest of the Avengers are in their natural positions and able to play their best ball. And so I think that that leads to some of what the rebounding issues have been where it's, yeah, we got to crash the boards and be elite in the paint. Maybe we're just not that sound and beat, but it's the. Ball tipped out, guys fighting for it. If we don't have LeBron and then BJ's over here and Wade's over here, if everyone's kind of vaguely out of position, we're just not able to fight at our peak for that. So give me the experiment at center tonight in a winnable game where if the game gets close and we let the Bulls go on a run or whatever, we can always revert back to... Core four. And again, then go small ball. It'd be like LeBron, give us five more minutes at center or we're just going to be out there. It's a controllable game. I think if we can get up early, we can get our guys rested. Obviously, Embiid fully rested. He'll be rested from Friday night on to the games later this week. But we can get LeBron less of a workload within the season, get some of our backup bench guys some further minutes to actually help develop them, because I don't know how much development you can really do in four-minute windows. Very good game tonight. Be back with Lose or Draw post-game with the reaction. Until next time, have a great rest of your day. Go Sixers. Talk to you guys soon.