Another Wild Night of Sixers basketball in the Books...

Another wild chapter to the Sixers season is in the books, and all I can say, well I can say a lot obviously because I'm a blowhard on the internet, but all I can say is maybe not the biggest win, maybe not the best win, but this one certainly broke ground in terms of many Sixers milestones, including I think that this is the first time that one of our players has actively had a sip of wine from a member of the crowd during a game. That's right, LeBron at one point going tumbling, maybe not tumbling, but he went out into the crowd, grabbed his little sip of some drink. That's just the kind of night it was as the Sixers completely show that I know absolutely nothing about basketball and lineups. And despite listing Embiid as questionable and then taking on the 1-5 Bulls, we do get a victory, but it requires Embiid to start at center. The first half was a bit of a battle and they went into halftime, made some huge adjustments, ended up blowing the absolute doors off them Bulls. In the realm of hyperbole that I use in terms of saying, no, this one was the biggest. No, this one was the biggest. Let me just say that that one was the most of the season so far. Welcome back to another episode of Sixers Digest. What's going on, everybody? Christian Pedersen back to another episode of the show that brings you daily content all season long. The final score, it was fantastico. Look, if you're going to beat the Bulls, beat the Bulls by 20 by the end of it all, certainly the kind of night that When you look back at it, no stress, no worries, not that I would. I was stressed at halftime going, wow, we started our core five and we're having to like burn through minutes here. And then in the second half, you will notice as I can draw some attention to where is it? This corner of the screen over here, that is the entirety of the bench. Baron Finley getting minutes, Ryan Rupair making his Sixers debut. So ultimately, this did wind up not necessarily being like a huge workload. On our main guys, this one was Maxey and company and just everybody balling out. Tyrese Maxey looking absolutely fantastic like himself. I was saying that this was going to either be him accentuating everybody or this was going to be him putting up 45 and just going Coco Loco. He did the assists version of it. Jalen Brown, how about him being the team leader in rebounds? That was unexpected. Also, though, partially due to Embiid not necessarily playing a full workload. He, uh... Embiid had himself another game. He just kind of seemed to chug along and be a little bit more of a silent killer for us this season. VJ Edgecombe continued to be absolutely fantastico, putting up 21 points. LeBron James... 15-9, the assists starting to pile up for LeBron this season. Like I said, he also tumbled into the crowd. Just go look that up. You'll get a kick out of it. All I can say is that from our starting five, and I've seen this now repeated by a fair amount of people on the internet, is that the vibes on this team are absolutely immaculate. So let me just say that... At what point do we start to just say that the question is answered about whether or not all these pieces fit together? Sure, the shooting could get better. Sure, you know, Maxi's, as my graphics loader here says, Maxi's scoring map could improve. Yeah, okay. Look at these, shout out again to our graphics people pumping these things out for us. Could we get better as a team in terms of overall scoring? OK, sure. Great. Could we get better at rebounding? OK, sure. Great. Nitpick all you want. I will take, though, the fact that when we were talking about preseason, what this thing was all going to come together and be, there was a lot of people saying. I was saying, let's do these sample size, let's do these games in, or do this season in 10 game sample sizes. And after 10, let's look back and reevaluate and see where we're at. And after 20 and 30 and 40, and some of you guys were in the comment section saying like, dude, these guys are not going to be gelling until 20, until 30, until 40. Look at where LeBron's previous first years with all of his other installments have gone. And when it was. The Heat and the Cavs and the Lakers, they all required this mid-season change and we've got to blow out Nick Nurse and hire Ty Lue. and all that. It seems like right now, while there are still improvements to be made in terms of the X's and O's of the basketball on the court, and we'll get to some of the bench in just a second, I think that the question about whether or not this all works together It has to be completely... What other thread can you tug at to say that this doesn't work as a group? The bench also getting heavily involved tonight. Last night, I recorded this at dang near midnight, so I don't know what time it is. I'm sorry. Sick toddler trying to work around all this. Thank Seeing Ryan Ruppert, the Barrett Violet, the Dembone, all those guys get in and get... you A bunch of minutes so and Dean Wade getting in and getting some good time and much, said Bona getting double digit minutes guys. and the overall bench contributions. I thought really to me also extend you really drove home to, I don't know, extenuated, accentuated. I don't know what word I'm looking for at this point in the night, but we're in the morning. Sorry. The mysteries of YouTube posting this. Seeing Nick Nurse be willing to get after it and get the, how do I say, the Sixers bench makes it a complete win. Seeing him willing to, after a lot of games going only eight and nine man rotations deep, have some inkling and desire to get the rest of the gang some time. Both did the little, like micro amounts of load management, but Embiid was in the 20s. James was in the 20s. We did not have to really crank this one all the way up for the gang. But I think it also, to me, was the perfect way to get... Just a little bit more. I talked about it pregame. We've got to get some sample size of what the rest of this is going to look like because as much as we know that our starting five through eight of Wade, KCP, and Simmons... We also got to know what the rest of this looks like, because there will come a point when we are headed down the back end stretch of this season. And I know that that is 50 games away, but you can't wait until the midpoint of the season to start dabbling in the rest of the bench. And getting the rest of the gang out there helps you understand. How the team itself is really, truly constructed. Because to me now, with all of the front half of this answered, we got to see what the back half of this looks like. If Dom Barlow's still got to get healthy and there are still questions to be asked. But Mike Yancey put all of this together. Not just the front half together and then just said, oh, pick me like six other creative players and just put them on the bench so that we can only run these five. This is not that. This is going to require a full team effort as the whole season goes on. And then we can constrict it again in the playoffs. But we got to get there to the playoffs. So we got to understand how well the rest of this team can compete. Because if it is only ever going to be... Two minutes against the 1-6, 1-7 bottom-of-the-barrel teams is going to require an enormous amount of load and a lot of miles on those tires for the main guys. We've got to figure out a couple of pockets here and there where there are some other rotations. How does LeBaron Phyland take a little bit of time off of Maxie's workload at point guard? How does Ryan Ruppert come in and help us actually defensively? And will we get a Dembone and finally start to grow into the player that he can and should be at his third season? So it was wild to see the whole bench get involved with LeBron James driving us out there. Just absolutely snapping necks and cashing checks. Let me know what you think about the game. Go Sixers. Have a great rest of your day. Sean and I will be back later today with more content. Until then, I already said go Sixers. 99 everyone.