Joel Embiid isn’t playing back-to-backs. Big man needs his rest. So he’s sitting out tonight’s home game against the Wizards. And while sitting JoJo at home seems shitty and counter-intuitive, it’s for good reason: Tomorrow night, on TNT, the whole nation will get to see Embiid face off against the best young center in the NBA not named Joel Embiid, Karl-Anthony Towns.

To simplify: Embiid’s foot injury was stress-related. In his podcast with Woj, he said one of the reasons he had to have the second surgery was because he didn’t listen to trainers and doctors when they said he needed to rest it and worked out instead. In his second rehab year, he learned to be patient, and to say the Sixers are being overly cautious with their golden goose is a massive understatement.

Max and I discussed on The Stepover a couple of weeks ago that while sitting Embiid at home seems like a slight to the home fans, you have to play him against Towns. You have to. The Sixers have only a handful of national games this year. They expected to have Ben Simmons to draw eyes to the games, but they don’t. What are they expected to trot out on national TV, this?

Set your DVRs.