UPDATE: He’s playing. Last-minute change. Ignore everything you are about to read.

Tonight’s game is sort of like AMC’s “The Walking Dead.”

Markelle Fultz and Justin Anderson are out.

Rudy Gay, Manu Ginobili, Kawhi Leonard, Danny Green, and Tony Parker will also miss the game.

And Joel Embiid’s bum hand keeps him sidelined, too. The Sixer big man has been limited in practice after spraining his right mitt during a fall in the Suns game on New Year’s Eve.

“When you see it, you see the bruising on his palm,” Brett Brown said pregame. If you go back and look at how he really fell, you’re surprised that that’s all it is. It’s a club hand, and it’s his shooting hand. Even yesterday we keep practice so that we can continue his cardio and get his fitness up. That’s my number one, by a mile, goal – is to get him in conditioning shape. Not physical, but conditioning and shape. So he’s practicing with us, but when you throw it into the post and he’s got to catch it, it’s like you’re touching a hot stove. You know? Like you just don’t want anything to do with it. You see the pain that he’s in when he touches the ball with his right hand. We’re going to monitor it. We won’t know until Friday in sort of that day to day (designation).”

Embiid spoke about the hand in the locker room pregame:

Meantime, Brown was asked if the team was getting Embiid ready for next week’s London game, with the insinuation that the club might be saving him for a showcase game.

“I almost hear what you’re asking I think,” Brown said. “I wouldn’t use that as, ‘let’s polish him up for London.’ If he’s good to go versus Detroit or whatever, then he’s good to go. I don’t think we’re going to walk on egg shells with the end game being in mind that we have to deliver him overseas. I don’t see that.”