Gonna be a busy weekend at the Sports Complex.

We’ve got the Portland Trail Blazers in town for  a rare Saturday afternoon game, 1 p.m. at the Wells Fargo Center. Across the street it’s the Flyers vs. Penguins in the Stadium Series game, unless that jawn gets postponed. Then, last but not least, Michael Buble will be doing his thing in South Philly on a Sunday night.

Sounds like my kind of weekend.

It’s not really a revenge game for the Sixers this weekend, but it sort of is. They got their butts whipped out in Portland in December, a 34-point loss sans Joel Embiid, who is similarly unavailable for tomorrow’s return leg.

I asked Brett Brown about the first Portland game during today’s availability:

Crossing Broad: Brett, when you have a game like that Portland trip, when the team just doesn’t have it…

Brown: I forgot about that one. Next question. (laughter).. we were down 40 I think…

Crossing Broad: Do you even watch that film? Or is it one where you just put it in the trash and move on to the next game?

Brown: No, I don’t do that, because I always learn something. But I hate watching that game, and I feel like it represents zero of who we are now. Sure, you better pay attention. In my mind I dismiss it, but not in my preparation. We pay attention, we look at stuff. That was one of those games that you want to just kick down the road.

Crossing Broad: So what did you learn from that game? Joel also wasn’t available for that one.

Brown: Joel wasn’t available. You could get into a lot of coach speak stuff with defense. I think they are a highly gifted offensive team. I think Terry Stotts historically has been an excellent offensive coach and coach in our league. I feel like, when you study the three point line and you start connecting the dots on how those are produced, you’ll find some common denominators in pick and roll offense with C.J. (McCollum) and Damian Lillard, like you better get this done, otherwise you’re gonna have (Al-Farouq) Aminu and Seth Curry and pick’em, our lefty friend that came over from Cleveland (Rodney Hood). Then if you don’t do your job you’re gonna take the 5th best offensive rebounding team that just got Kanter. And so I bet they sail up in that category with somebody that skilled. Those things featured in (the first game) and they’re magnified even more as I see it in the rear view mirror and going into tomorrow.”

Portland is the NBA’s third-best rebounding team, pulling down 47.8 boards a night and 11.4 on the offensive glass. Jusuf Nurkic averages 3.4 offensive boards a game and Enes Kanter is Enes Kanter, though the Sixers did a good job against him in the recent games he played here with New York.

As for three point shooting, you’ve got Lillard hitting at 37% on 7.8 attempts per game. McCollum shoots 36% on 6.3 average tries. As a team, they shoot 36.1%, which is good for 7th in the NBA,  just 0.1% better than the Sixers.

So it should be a good one tomorrow, hopefully better than December 30th:

The 1 p.m. start is funky, and it probably throws off both teams. Portland is out here from the west coast, and while they did play in Brooklyn Thursday night, a 1 p.m. east coast start equates to 10 a.m. in Oregon.

Said Brett of how this affects his preparation:

We went through our Portland prep today (Friday). Normally I meet the guys, if it were an evening game, down at the arena we have film session and what I call ‘state of the union’ at four if it’s a 7 o’clock game. I’ve got coaches meetings from 2 till 4 and we plan the 4 o’clock film and then go out on the floor for walk through. That’s kind of the rhythm of our day in a normal evening game. For tomorrow, we did our work today. They’ll go down and get their individual work done and come in 10 minutes earlier, at 45 minutes on the clock. We normally meet as a team at 35. I think it’s one of these games, where to force feed extra stuff in – I don’t feel it. I think I can connect the dots with some of the things we did with Miami and bring them over to the emphasis with Portland that’s real.

Our preparation will be a little different because of the timing.

The only other note from Brett’s presser regarded Zhaire Smith, who again practiced with the Sixers today. Brown referred to Friday as a “study type session” with video and walkthrough. Smith did cardio and has a “bounce” to his step.

“He looks good physically,” Brown said. When that translates into him playing G-League type of stuff, I still don’t have any comment on that. But it’s great to see him run around.”