Sixers basketball is Back...

Say it with me, everybody. 1-0! 1-0! Basketball is back. Yeah, we did that to the Knicks. What's going on, everybody? Christian Pedersen back with another episode of Sixers Digest, the show that is happy to welcome back any and all versions of this team. And it's not just a blue and white scrimmage this time. It was us beating the Knicks rather handily. I don't want to overreact. I am a YouTuber and I am here to be a Sixers fanboy, but I'm not going to overreact and be like, A++, best game ever, oh my gosh. Obviously, we got to talk about the aerial hook porty injury and some of the bad news there. But nonetheless, I think if I'm giving this one an overall grade, I will say high B+, low A-. What do you guys think? Where do you sit on how that one went for our boys? I think that there is significantly more good to take away than bad from that one. I think that Jalen Brown dropping 22 in the first half alone was great. The fact that we did this while Jalen Brunson and company were playing and our main Embiid and company weren't. And look, it all felt really, really good. As always, if you want to like, subscribe, comment, share, follow, all those other YouTubey buttons, we're going to have daily content for you all season long. Hopefully a lot more post-game reactions to games like this one rather than losses. I'd set it all off-season. What if our defensive shortcomings were helped out by just enough offense that we are able to overcome and outlast anything? And I think that's pretty much what we got here. Got to say a quick thank you also, as always, to Calshi. We are still the third favorite team on their markets to be the NBA champions. And if you want to use the code DigestNBA when you are signing up, Calshi will hook you up with $55 when you trade your first $25 in options. First, let's get to the bad news. Ariel Huckporty leaving with what looks to be a right Achilles injury. As of 9.30 tonight, he has been... He did not have an update from Nick Nurse, but he is not encouraging Nick reporters. He'll go for imaging on Tuesday. They're looking at his right Achilles. I think no matter what, even if you get a... If you get worst case scenario, that's the season. If you get best case scenario, that's most of the season. I don't think that you go down with an Achilles that's just, oh, this is a Kayla Williams light overreaction. There is... I saw this tweet that I thought was kind of interesting. If he gets a disabled player exemption, we would still not be able to exceed the first apron. So this isn't going to have some huge effect on our available cap space. If we have to move on from him, I'm assuming that Ryan Rupert will be the next man up, at least in terms of the initial internal options. This is a big man, but also a big potential injury for the Sixers to already come from the preseason games. Okay, let's break down the numbers by the team, and then we'll get to the individuals. You know, a decent enough offensive shooting... When it's a preseason game, you're obviously going to get St. Thomas and Rupert and some of these people playing where it's not necessarily like the A squad. And so some guys are out there taking shots that you don't necessarily want them to take. And maybe as a team, you can't judge the entirety of those numbers, but decently good from the free throw line, pretty good from beyond the three-point arc. I think all in all, it was a pretty good offensive night. The blocks, assists, steals, rebounds, all really actually pretty dang good. And this was one of the points of contention all offseason long was how are they going to manage in terms of the big men? How are they going to manage in terms of rebounding? How are they going to create off of steals? And what are they going to be able to do defensively and then into transition? And I think that the offensive rebounding certainly was not marquee. And that would be maybe the one thing out of all of this that I would take away as being like, you know, that's a little bit of an issue. We need to work on that one for sure. But points off of turnovers, fast break points, points in the paint, all healthy numbers. And sometimes that's honestly all you can ask for in a preseason game when the spreadsheet looks like this. This is just half of the team. It was a full effort today. I know that this is a real scattershot of numbers being thrown at you. So my apologies. Or look, the first couple of preseason games, there's going to be some decent insanity coming at you in terms of the numbers. Jalen Brown, like I said, 22 points in that first half. I thought he looked incredibly comfortable. Vijay Edgecombe, 12 points on 20 minutes. Dude is a superstar in the making. Dylan Jones, Justin Edwards, Contavious Caldwell-Pope all played fairly well. There was not necessarily like an overwhelming standout amongst the secondary group. Caleb Love with double digits. Jabari Walker had himself a bunch of rebounds. And St. Thomas, both double digits on the boards, which I thought was awesome. LeBaron Phylan, I would have liked to have seen more from him shooting-wise. But nonetheless, in 25 minutes, I thought that he looked like he's growing up in real time in front of our eyes. He's getting out there and getting after it. And he's going to be somebody who's going to, I think, have a really, really, really high ceiling. So all in all, this comes together, like I said, to be a, I think, a B plus, A minus kind of win. You can probably go a million layers deeper into the finite amount of, well, this switch on the ball and that. One, I'm not necessarily that level of gifted as a basketball pundit. And two, with the amount of every single person getting to play and it not including Embiid and Maxie and LeBron, I don't think that this really says all that much about what Nick Nurse has planned for this season. This was a very large audition where we saw that our depth is better than the Knicks' depth. And it's a good moral victory. And it's a great way to pick up some momentum to start the season. And I would probably be best case scenario-ing it had we lost anyway. So I don't, you know, full transparency there. But I think that this is a really solid foundation to start the preseason in the triple digits to be putting out the good vibes. Definitely gonna have to watch for Huck Porty to see what that injury is and then figure out where the team goes from there. Because if him and Bona are both sidelined to begin the season, that is certainly a depth issue that needs to be immediately addressed in a significant kind of way. So gonna have another quick test for Mike Gansey in terms of roster construction before this thing even really ostensibly gets going. But there we got it. One game in on the preseason. Let me know what you think. Like, subscribe, comment, share, follow, all those other YouTube-y buttons. Until next time, we'll talk to you soon.