In today's episode of The Sixers Beat Rich and I go over the Sixers,

119 to 111 win over the Sacramento Kings to kickoff, this four-game road trip.

The conundrum that Matisse Thibel presents as a borderline, unplayable player offensively,

who then dominates and takes over games on the defensive side of the court,

and whether or not the Sixers are exceeding our expectations a quarter of the way through the season.

We're going to do a Mailbag podcast here coming up soon in the coming days.

So if you have a question, send us an email to mailbag at sixersbeat.com.

Enjoy the podcast.

All right. Welcome welcome everybody.

This is Derek Bodner, joined as always by Rich Hoffman on the Sixers Beat, part of the Athletics Podcast Network.

How are you doing, Rich?

I'm great, man.

I am, you know, there's not a lot going on right now.

The Sixers are pretty good, but we still have to wait for a long time. And that's kind of going to be the theme of today's podcast, I would say.

They are.

They are 18 and seven.

They're starting that the Bucks are pulling up close alongside the Sixers atop the Eastern Conference.

So their lead is shrinking in the conference, but their lead over the rest of the non-Milwaukee teams continues to grow.

They're four and a half games up on the Brooklyn Nets for the third seed.

And then five games up on the Celtics.

Right now, the East only has four teams over 500.

So the Sixers are putting some distance between themselves and most of the Eastern

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