It's all falling perfectly into place...

It's all falling perfectly into place for the 76ers this season. Yes, that's obvious that I mean, we're the number one team in basketball, that our superstars are superstars. We got the best record, first place in the East, first time to be 4-0 since the last time we went to the championship, yada, yada, yada. Great. Wonderful. I love that. I don't want to talk about that on this episode instead. Welcome back, everybody. Christian Pedersen, another episode of Sixers Digest, the show that's bringing you daily videos on all things Sixers. I would like to talk about how, to me, the bigger story. Is that Mike Ganty is undefeated at putting together a bench. So far, yes. The high-end trades and accolades are obviously working out. Jalen Brown ball and LeBron ball. Everything's fit together perfectly there. But of the majority of the games and minutes that we have seen from the 76ers bench this season. It has come down to be my boy Adem Bona, which would have been Ariel Huckporty, a Mike Ganty move, but Bona's in with the injury. But the rest of it has been Dean Wade, KCP, and Anfernee Simons. All three of those guys are Mike Ganty gets, and I would argue that they are collectively, holistically... More important? Maybe we can debate that in the comment section, but I think that they are, at the very least, as important as the entirety of the starting lineup moves. For Casey. Let's start with Anthony Simons. According to you guys, he is a living bucket. The graphics people want to call him an added scoring punch. KCP. He is... Adding the bench perimeter spacings. All these guys got collectively some good verbs and ad nouns going for them. And Dean Wade is providing that defensive sort of glue guy vibe. Also some adembo. But we can debate that on another video. But together, all three of these guys. I don't think you could have planned this any better. And so we've got to give Mike Gancy his due and talk about how, yes, he deserves a statue already for the amazing work he has done. But I cannot overstate the importance of what it means to have a bench that is out here delivering. The numbers, the minutes, and the complete variety of supporting casts that we have seen from this bench. And to, like I said, have three of those four guys, if not for the Huck Forty injury, would have been four of those four guys. And the rest of the cast has, we've seen Ryan Ruppert, we've seen LeBaron, we've seen Jabbar. But it really has been those four guys getting overwhelmingly amounts of minutes. Dembowa being at the lowest of those minutes, it really has been all three Mike Gancy gets. The numbers... They have panned out quite nicely on that front, but they have also panned out nicely on the Kashi markets to have us be that still the third favorite team, but we are going to be climbing soon. I would assume in terms of our odds to win the NBA championship. And as always, we got to say a quick thank you to Kashi for sponsoring this channel. A reminder, if you use the code digest NBA, Kashi will hook you guys up with $55. When you get your first, when you play your first $25 in options, recent scoring from Anthony Simons. Like you said, dude has been a bucket. And I was saying going into that, I was not disagreeing that he's been a bucket, but I was saying he felt to me more like he was going to be the occasional Anthony Simons game kind of fit. That it was going to be like, oh man, when we really need it, he lit up here. When the guys, when the main guys were having an off night in terms of like, like, like off for load management, he had a game there. Instead, it has been consistently big minutes from him and KCP and Wade, but it's also been big, big buckets. I think that it is. Then something that you can't overstate what it means to have a guy who can come in as a backup point guard. He's been playing good defense. He's been out here as, like I said, ball handler, ball shooter, completely lethal addition, and on a really good value contract-wise that he might wind up being the best money in to value out for anybody in terms of any bench player in the entirety of the NBA. I don't have all the numbers in front of me on that one, Absolutely huge. value from him. You go further down him and, uh, let's look at KCP, his numbers. Wow. Maybe not as like high end explosive. Oh, wow. Look, KCP put up 30 or 60 or 150 or all these rebounds or this out of the other. He feels dagger-ish to me. And like they said, spacing wise, KCP feels as, As opportune of a vet pickup as you could have come up with, and I get that this is partially LeBron bringing his boy over, and so maybe not 100% Mike Gancy, but then I would argue that it is still Mike Gancy because Mike Gancy brought us LeBron, but nonetheless, that's semantics. KCP has just been really good at being there when we need him. And not being overly needy when we don't. And it's been minutes that have been good relief minutes to get people some breathers, where he's played well on the defensive end. He has shot well on the offensive end. He pairs nicely with different guys. He provides, like we said, on cool graphics. He provides good spacing. It has been something. It's also been interesting to see the different lineup permutations because it has not been just wholesale hockey style line shifts where it's like, okay, now we've got front group coming out. We've got the back group coming in. It's been, KCP has worked well with, you know, it's Maxie and LeBron and Vijay and Wade. It's Embiid, Brown. With Simons and, and edge, it's all these different ones. And it doesn't seem like there's any crazy drop off of like, oh, that was the permutation where things just fell apart. And we just had to run it for a couple of minutes for the sake of getting, you know, through to get to out of, you know, to get ourselves out of the third quarter into the fourth quarter. Dean Wade and his defensive roles cannot also be understated, given that this is a team that to me, Had some questions about the defensive edge going into it initially, and we're still lacking in the rebounding category, and maybe that would have been fixed by Huck Porty, and so Mike Gansey would have truly been 4-for-4 undefeated at his role of putting together a bench. But the numbers for Dean Wade have been really just kind of exactly... Basically, um... What you need from a guy sometimes in terms of just like, play good defense, don't let up the big shot, get a couple of boards, dish the ball off to somebody else, because obviously our other main shooters and our bench shooters are coming in and providing, and to have that, and to have those three guys in averaging at least 15 minutes a game. If not significantly more on some nights, plus a Dembona averaging about 12 a night, so not necessarily as big of a bench contribution. But have those three guys all be Mike Gansey gits that fit well within Nick Nurse's system. Just to me, it cannot be overstated. What a masterful class, like a true, dude needs to put on a TED talk about how he put together the rebuild of this roster, because we went in one year from an off-season talking about, we are just sunk with these big contracts, and I don't know how we get past being a 7 or an 8 seed without Embiid just staying healthy and mysteriously becoming even better than he already is, to now it's being like, look. We're lethal on nights where we don't even have those guys out there and we might win 76 games. So let's argue about it. Let's discuss it. I want to hear from you guys in the comment section what you think about the bench. Maybe you want even more out of the bench. Maybe you want Mike Gundy to make more moves. Let me know. Until next time, go Sixers. Hit that like, subscribe, comment, share, follow, all those other YouTube-y buttons. Thanks for tuning in, guys. Have a great rest of your day.