On Thursday night, the Sixers host the Atlanta Hawks in a Christmas Eve-Eve battle between two teams that have woefully underperformed after playoff runs last season. Sure, some of that is related to COVID-19 absences, but plenty more of it is related to players underachieving when they have been healthy enough to play. The Sixers enter this game 16-15 and, if the regular season ended right now, stuck in a play-in game to make the main playoff draw. The Hawks are even worse off; at 14-16, they are eleventh in the conference and, if the regular season ended right now, they’d be done. The Hawks also played last night in Atlanta and are thus on the back half of a back-to-back on the road.

Let’s get into our Sixers vs. Hawks betting pick with player prop predictions, odds, and analysis for this December 23, 2021 matchup.

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Sixers vs. Hawks Betting Pick (December 23, 2021)

It is long past time for the coaches and front offices of NBA teams to push back on the league with reference to the insistence on playing games where the competitive integrity has been erased by COVID-19 protocols.

The Atlanta Hawks tonight will be without the following players due to the league’s health and safety protocols: Trae Young (heard of him), Clint Capela (heard of him too), Danilo Gallinari, Lou Williams, and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot (long live the Process). They’re also missing Solomon Hill and De’Andre Hunter, but those two players are out injured. Injuries happen. This COVID-19 situation is another animal altogether.

The Sixers also have some players out due to the league’s health and safety protocols. Andre Drummond, Danny Green, Shake Milton and Georges Niang will all miss tonight’s game. Furkan Korkmaz is sick, but apparently it’s not COVID-19 because he’s merely day-to-day.


As a result of all of these absences, and the fact that the Sixers’ best players will play while the Hawks’ best players will not, the Sixers have been installed as a 10.5-point favorite at home against a team that eliminated them from last season’s playoffs when the Sixers still had Ben Simmons in the starting lineup. In short, this game tonight is a shadow of what it ought to be, and the fact that people got stuck paying full price for the tickets is a class action-worthy crime. 

So what should the teams do? They should do what Gregg Popovich used to do with the San Antonio Spurs back when the Spurs were among the best teams in the league but had an aging core. Popovich routinely sat the likes of Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Bruce Bowen, often all at the same time, if the Spurs were playing, say, their third game in four nights or their first game back from a long road trip. Popovich would essentially dare the league to punish him for compromising the competitive integrity of the game by sitting so many stars at one time. And on several occasions, the league did just that

But drastic times call for drastic measures, and tonight, if the Hawks had any sense at all, they’d also be sitting John Collins, Kevin Huerter, Cam Reddish, Bogdan Bogdanovic and any other player they consider marginally valuable to their forthcoming effort to climb back into the playoff picture. Once the Hawks are fully healthy, they have more than enough talent to get on a run and pull themselves out of the bottom third of the conference. Putting extra mileage on a guy like Collins tonight makes absolutely no sense, to say nothing of the risk of injury.

Besides, what can the league really do to any of these teams for doing what is in their best interest competitively? The league is postponing games because teams can’t field eight NBA players, but they’re going to force the Hawks to run some of their better players into an ambush tonight? In an 82-game season, there are plenty of opportunities to take a step back in order to take two forward later. For the Hawks tonight, the decision to play any of their better players at all is, in its own way, a missed opportunity.

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Sixers vs. Hawks Odds

Here’s the line for the Sixers and Hawks at FanDuel Sportsbook:

  • Point Spread: Sixers -10.5 (-106), Hawks +10.5 (-114)
  • Moneyline: Sixers -550, Hawks +410
  • Total: 208.5

Bets We Like With a Sixers Win

Sixers to Win and Over 208.5 Total Points (+112, FanDuel Sportsbook)

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We love the Sixers in this game. Yes, the Sixers have played the Hawks already this season (twice actually), but the Sixers will want to put another L on the Hawks’ record this season and continue to erase the bad taste from last season’s playoff exit at the hands of the Hawks. Additionally, though it’s only December, this is the last time these two teams will meet this season unless they end up in another playoff encounter. The Sixers can sweep the three-game season series tonight, and with the Hawks decimated by injury, look for the Sixers to try to hang an ugly number on the Hawks who get sent out to take a likely beating.

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Bets We Like Independent of Outcome

John Collins Over 19.5 Points (-125, Caesars Sportsbook)

The Hawks are going to struggle in this game, but somebody has to score their points and Collins is the best player taking the floor for the Hawks tonight. Collins has scored twenty or more points in each of his last three games, and he will have the opportunity to play at least some of his minutes against the likes of Charles Bassey and Paul Reed. This total is especially likely to hit if the Sixers get out to a big lead early and try to manage Joel Embiid’s load by sitting him quickly.

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Joel Embiid Over 11.5 Rebounds (-120, DraftKings Sportsbook)

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Collins is a viable big in the league, but Capela is the one that gives Embiid trouble around the basket and on the rebounding side of the game. With Capela out and with Drummond not spelling Embiid, it stands to reason that Embiid will play a few more minutes than he ordinarily might and that he should have an easier time pulling down rebounds while he is out there. There really isn’t anyone on either the Hawks or the Sixers playing tonight who can do much to undermine Embiid’s rebound total.

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Tyrese Maxey Over 15.5 Points (-118, FOX Bet)

Maxey was heating up before sustaining a quadriceps contusion in the Sixers’ December 15 win over the Miami Heat, a game in which Maxey had 27 points. He scored 23 points two nights earlier in Memphis. The injury cost Maxey a week — it also drove this prop down to a winnable number, especially given a depleted and probably tired Hawks outfit who won’t much fancy chasing the high-energy Maxey all over the court.

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Sixers vs. Hawks Prediction

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There isn’t much more to say about this game. A loss to the Hawks under these circumstances would be a fireable offense for many involved in the Sixers’ day-to-day operations. This isn’t the NFL, where any given Sunday any team can beat any team. That idiom assumes, by and large, two healthy teams that come with players of different skill levels. This game isn’t that — it’s a crippled Hawks team that played last night in Atlanta playing a much healthier Sixers team that last played on Monday. Ordinarily, laying double digits with the Sixers is a mistake. Tonight, it’s not.

Pick: Sixers -10.5 (-110, Barstool Sportsbook)

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