In Thursday’s thrilling overtime win over the Houston Rockets, the Philadelphia 76ers were able to deploy their projected starting lineup (Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe, Kelly Oubre Jr., Paul George, Joel Embiid) for the first time this season. If that performance is what Sixers fans can expect from that group, we’d sure like to see some more of it. Well, it looks like we will have a chance to experience an encore, as the Sixers’ injury report for Saturday’s game against the New York Knicks is pretty
clean.
If things hold, the Sixers should have the entire roster available to try and take down the Knicks in Philadelphia. Embiid played a season-high 46 minutes in the overtime win, and Paul George logged 37 minutes amidst a bit of foul trouble. Even with the day off Friday, it’s a good sign that both veterans are projected to be good to go for Saturday afternoon after that sort of workload. The Sixers have yet another back-to-back on Monday and Tuesday, so their availability Saturday would be most welcome with each of them presumably sitting out one of those two contests.
Philadelphia currently sits in fifth place in the Eastern Conference, 1.5 games back of the third-place Knicks. The Sixers already won both of the earlier games this season in New York. We’ll see if they now have all hands on deck in Philadelphia for tomorrow’s rivalry clash, as they look to build some momentum and continuity leading up to the trade deadline in a couple weeks.
