You want the good news or the bad news?

The bad news is that Ben Simmons is listed as questionable for tomorrow night’s game against the Pistons with the same lower back tightness that forced him out of Saturday’s win after just eight minutes of play.

“He’s progressing and he did not go through practice today,” said head coach Brett Brown on Monday afternoon. “I believe our club will put out some level of more information later, but he’s progressing.”

“Nobody said he’s definitely not playing, that’s as candid as I can be.”

I saw Simmons having some work done on his back after practice, with a pair of trainers having him do push downs on what looked like a straight lateral bar. One trainer had some kind of monitor on Simmons’ lower back while he slowly did fixed weight reps on the machine.

The good news is that Joel Embiid is on no restriction whatsoever for the Sixers’ first back-to-back of the season. Mike Muscala was also upgraded from “doubtful” to “questionable” after participating fully in Monday’s session, though Brown said he “personally does not think” he’ll have his backup power forward on Tuesday or Wednesday.

“He moved around okay today,” said Brown of Muscala. “I think one of the things we’re all aware of, concerned of, he felt like last year he was in rehab a lot, then would go play, then back to rehab and treatment and go play, and never really got ahead of it. My advice to him, our direction to him, is that ‘you come back when you feel like you’re not going to be chasing.’ I don’t want him chasing. When he comes back he’ll be good to go and we expect that to be good enough to sustain longevity.”

Wilson Chandler remains out with his hamstring strain and was a partial practice participant. He’ll be reevaluated prior to Saturday’s home game with Charlotte. Jerryd Bayless and Zhaire Smith are also on the injury report, out with a left knee sprain and Jones fracture, respectively.

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The clock showed 1:24 remaining in the fourth quarter with the Sixers clinging to a one-point lead against the Orlando Magic.

A brilliant defensive possession saw Joel Embiid deflect a pass beyond half court, with Terrence Ross collecting the loose ball some 50 feet from the basket. As JJ Redick stepped up to close the distance, Ross pulled up from 42 feet and let go of a three point attempt that found nothing but net on the way down, giving his team a 112-110 lead.

“When I turned around to look at the ball I knew it was going in,” said Redick of the long-range heave. “I just knew from the path of the ball. I knew it was going in. It was a sick feeling.”

It was an eye-roller of a sequence in a game that should have never been close in the first place. But the first-quarter injury exit of Ben Simmons tested the Sixers’ already thin-depth, with a scrappy Orlando team hanging tough and keeping the game close throughout the second half.

Head coach Brett Brown suggested that a shred of doubt might have creeped in when he watched the Ross shot go down.

“Sometimes that’s the hoop God. Maybe it isn’t your night some nights,” he said. “To the guys’ credit, we found a way to win. Normally when you’re looking at those types of games you come into it and you’re like ‘jeez, we’ve got 20 turnovers or whatever,’ and we didn’t (in this game). I think (Orlando’s) ability to make threes, our inability to get to the foul line, those types of things I feel like are most on my mind. I look forward to seeing their threes. That’s a big number of threes to make.”

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I’m not one for conspiracy theories. Reading tea leaves? Sometimes. Like, when Anthony Davis signed with Lebron James’ Rich Paul’s Klutch Sports Group last month, one could make the case that AD might entertain signing with the Lakers after the 2019-20 season. I digress.

According to Woj, the NBA is considering pushing back the rumored season to end the One-and-Done rule – the rule that prevents players from entering the NBA Draft directly from high school. No big deal, right? For many it wouldn’t be an issue, until you remember that the Sixers traded Mikal Bridges for Zhaire Smith and an unprotected 2021 first-round pick that belonged to the Miami Heat. For those who need a refresher, Sixers head coach and de facto president of basketball operations Brett Brown said of the pick:

“…and then there’s a 2021 pick and we all understand that that could be the year that high school people are allowed into the NBA and that is far out and it also could be the thing.”

So what does this have to do with Adam Silver and conspiracies? What if I told you this trade was a catalyst for postponing the end of the One-And-Done rule?

Per Woj:

“Phoenix traded the rights to Miami’s unprotected 2021 first-round pick to Philadelphia in June, and the moving of that valued pick played some part in pushing back the proposed rule change to 2022, league sources said. Those teams made decisions without the benefit of knowing the timetable on a change in the age limit. The first crop of high school seniors will be deeper in talent than those who come immediately before and after it.”

That’s right, ladies and gents, Silver’s league office is attempting to perpetuate this narrative that teams had no idea a change to the One-And-Done rule could be coming. EXCEPT THEY SENT A MEMO TO TEAMS ABOUT ABOLISHING THE ONE-AND-DONE RULE AS EARLY AS 2021 A WEEK PRIOR TO THE JUNE 21ST NBA DRAFT ON JUNE 15TH!!! 

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I think I traversed the entire length of the Markelle Fultz reactionary spectrum last night.

It started with the Wells Fargo Center crowd calling for him to “shoooooooot!” whenever he had the ball in his hands, which felt a little boorish to me. What kind of of rudimentary behavior is this?

But when the first shot went up, a mid-range jumper that didn’t even go in, I heard the roar from the stands and thought, “ah wow, they’re really pulling for this kid, this is special.”

It was confounding for me, because I’ve never really experienced anything like it. The entire thing had an overwhelmingly positive connotation to it, because the fans truly want Markelle to be successful and they want to help him through his struggles. It’s ridiculously antithetical to everything we’ve ever been taught about the Philadelphia fan base.

Still, the longer I sat there, I couldn’t shake the feeling of how elementary this whole exercise was. Here’s the #1 draft pick from a year ago, playing against a depleted Bulls team at home and getting cheers just for attempting a jump shot in a game.

How low has the bar been set?

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If you’re going to the home opener tonight, congratulations, you’re taking home the t-shirt pictured above.

The Sixers also announced today all of the promotional stuff for the coming season, which includes five “Spirit of 76” games where the team will wear those gnarly City Edition uniforms:

• Friday, Nov. 16 vs. Utah Jazz
• Friday, Nov. 23 vs. Cleveland Cavaliers
• Friday, Nov. 30 vs. Washington Wizards
• Friday, Dec. 14 vs. Indiana Pacers
• Friday, Jan. 11 vs. Atlanta Hawks

A lot of the old “activations” are coming back, such as the “Wendy’s Frosty Freeze-Out,” the Chick-fil-A challenge, and the Honda half-court shot.

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This is the hottest feud of the year, definitely hotter than Khabib vs. McGregor.

Backstory:

If you listened to the national broadcast of the Sixers game on Tuesday, you heard play-by-play guy Kevin Harlan pronounce “Dario Saric” in this manner:

“duh-REE-oh” 

That resulted in some head-scratching and complaining on Twitter, because that’s not how you pronounce Dario’s name, right?

But Harlan defended himself and blamed the alleged error on a cheat sheet provided by the Sixers’ public relations staff, which he later furnished as proof in a sideways image shared on Twitter Thursday morning:

Tune in at 11:30 when @975Middays is joined by the great @Kevinharlan! He was on the call for the Sixers-Celtics game and will also be on the call tonight against the Bulls! Don't miss it

— 975TheFanatic (@975TheFanatic) October 18, 2018

pic.twitter.com/NNfZNf65G1

— Kevin Harlan (@Kevinharlan) October 18, 2018

The misaligned picture does indeed say (dah-RIO) on it, so one would assume Harlan is only following team instructions on how to pronounce the power forward’s first name. As per standard rules of writing out pronunciations, you would put the emphasis on the syllable written in capital letters.

Examples:

• the former Flyer would be Eric day-zhar-DAN, not Eric day-ZHAR-dan
• the current Eagle would be Alshon JEFF-ery, not Alshon jeff-ERY
• the current Eagle would be Tim JER-nuh-genn, not Tim jer-NUH-genn

Harlan doubled down on his pronunciation during a Thursday appearance with Jason Myrtetus and the Cuz on 97.5 the Fanatic, which you can listen to after the jump:

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Ah yes, we still have 81 games left in the season. It didn’t seem that way after the incessant bitching and whining on Wednesday morning, but maybe we’ve come to our senses now.

The Sixers are going to commit to Markelle Fultz in this early part of the schedule, and they certainly should, but they need to be 100% in. You can’t half-ass this thing, and it starts with Brett Brown giving Markelle consistent second half minutes so that he finds rhythm and continuity with the first unit.

Fultz played 24 minutes on Tuesday night, 21 of which took place in the first half. The problem is not his minute total, because that’s a good overall number, but you have to distribute those minutes better so that he’s not sitting on the pine for most of the second half.

One thing you can do is split Fultz and JJ Redick in a front/back manner, meaning that Markelle can start each quarter before giving way to JJ to finish out the period.

It would look something like this:

• 1st quarter: Fultz 7 minutes, Redick 5 minutes
• 2nd quarter: Fultz 6 minutes, Redick 6 minutes
• 3rd quarter: Fultz 5 minutes, Redick 7 minutes
• 4th quarter: Fultz 4 minutes, Redick 8 minutes

That gives you 22 minutes for Markelle and 26 for JJ, who can then finish out the 4th quarter with the starters.

Fair? Unfair? Smart? Dumb? It’s just one way to move forward, depending on what the injury and bench situation looks like with Landry Shamet and T.J. McConnell in the mix. You’re going to have Zhaire Smith, Mike Muscala, and Wilson Chandler back at some point, so the rotation is going to look MUCH different than what we saw in the season opener.

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