Welcome to the Saturday Slammin' Jam here on the Athletic NBA Daily, brought to you by Amazon Prime.

On today's show, we're doing our good, bad at what?

We're going to talk about the Detroit Pistons with our guy, Bryce Simon, and then we'll do some trivia. But before any of that, Alex, what happened in the NBA this week?

Well, Andrew, the top story this week was the Board of Governors meeting where a vote was approved to explore bids for expansion teams exclusively in Vegas and Seattle, moving the league

one step closer to a 32 team league. Commissioner Adam Silver, speaking after the meeting, spoke

on a broad range of topics, including tanking. Silver said that the owners, quote,

seemed unanimous that a change was needed and that that change needed to take place prior to

this year's draft and free agency.

No specifics were given, but Silver did say, quote, we're going to fix it full stop.

Now, whatever changes the league makes are likely to have unintended consequences, similar

to what we are seeing now with the 65 game rule for postseason awards, the Players Association

called for the 65 game rule to be abolished this week, though Adam Silver did not sound like

a change was coming, saying, quote, I think it's working. The focus of the Players Association's

Iyer was Cade Cunningham, who played 61 games, almost 2,100 minutes, but will likely miss the

65 game cutoff if he does not return

soon. Many have pointed out how taking into account minutes played could potentially help

these borderline cases. Take, for example, Tyrese Maxie, who has only played 61 games, but has

played over 2,300 minutes. That's more than 600 minutes than Victor Wembeyanama as an example, but Maxi will not be

eligible for all-MBA if he does not play four more games. Speaking of the Sixers, they finally

got some good news this week. Both Joel Embed out for the last month with an oblique strain,

and Paul George out for the last 25 games due to suspension, came back in a dominant win over the Bulls. Both players look great. Mb'd put up 35, 6, and 7 in 28 minutes, while Paul George put up 28, 6 and 4 with 4 steals in only 26 minutes. They should rest these guys all the time, Andrew. They're so good when they come back. The last piece of the puzzle will be Maxi, who is scheduled to be re-evaluated at the end of March, which is this upcoming weekend.

Now, the win against the Bulls has temporarily brought the Sixers up to the seven seed, only a game back of the five-seed hawks, who have now won 14 of their last 15th. Five of the last games of the season for the Hawks, however, are against the top four seeds in the east, which may make it difficult to hang on to that five seed. One of the reasons Philly has moved up is because the magic and heat decided to fall apart this week.

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