Playoff Mailbag 1.0

An extra newsletter to get you ready for the postseason.

Hello again! It’s the playoffs. Might as well double up the newsletter output on this fine Friday afternoon.

Playoff Mailbag 1.0

This won’t be the only playoff mailbag I do, but I wanted to get one out before the series started.

On that note, here’s a dozen questions asked by you, the readers, earlier today. Enjoy!

MB asks…How much faith do you put in the regular season stats against this team? I-Hart was pretty effective against Embiid, and the Knicks on the whole looked like the better squad 3 out of a four games.

I put very little faith in the stats as a whole, only because there hasn’t been a single game played between these teams in which the personnel from said game is identical to the personnel we have now.

Mitch missed every game. Joel missed three of the four. Anunoby missed two. Maxey missed one. Randle isn’t here now. The entire Sixers’ bench from the January 5 blowout has been overhauled, and Grimes was still here in that win.

What is relevant is the film from the various matchups, and I strongly encourage everyone to check out Benjy’s excellent film thread from this week.

Rob Neagle asks… Over/Under Embiid minutes per game in the series: 35?

Over, easy.

Embiid played 38 minutes in the play-in game. He’s also averaged over 35 minutes in six of his last seven playoff series. The one exception was against Washington back in 2021, when he was able to take it easy in two Philly blowouts and then got hurt early in Game 4.

I’d set the line at 37.5 minutes.

Richie Weiss asks… Please talk to us about the importance of having at least 12 fouls on Embiid between Isaiah and Mitch (and Achiuwa too, which gets us to 18).