In today's episode of the Sixers Beat, which and I go over what we have seen from preseason play so far, focusing in mainly on the stellar play of Tyresexie, on what we've seen in the limited time that James Hardin has played, in the newcomers, the Anthony Milton, and PJ Tucker, and in the backup center rotation.

Enjoy the podcast.

All right. Welcome, everybody. This is Derek Bodner.

Join Barrett Hoffman on the Sixers Beat, a part of the Athletics Podcast Network.

Hey doing, Rich.

Derek, it's a beautiful day, and tomorrow's a beautiful day because we got some playoff baseball, baby.

Yes, we did. The sun is out. The sun is legitimately out for the first time since we came back from training camp a week ago.

I feel guilty complaining about the weather, considering what certain parts of the country are going through.

But boy, we had a lot of cloudy, rainy days in a row.

It is nice to get just a little bit of sunshine.

Just a little bit.

It's so great.

It's so great. Wonderful feeling. You got playoff basketball or baseball starting tomorrow. Preseason basketball. We've had two games here since we did our last podcast. Things are looking up. And out of all that, I feel like what you and I are going to talk about is the least consequential because they are preseason games. But it is our first glimpse of this team, our first glimpse of some of these players in a Sixers uniform, our first glimpse of

Tyrese since he become Dame Willard proper. So where would you like to start out of all that?

I would actually like to start with one quick comment on the Phillies, because I do think it relates to the Sixers and that it was unbelievable how happy I was watching them celebrate in the Houston locker room.

And it just reminded me, because again, I think of everything through a Sixers lens, it's our jobs, just how nice it is to have low expectations. They make the, they just make the playoffs and it's amazing. They're the number six seed. It's not even as hard as it used to be our whole lives. They were horrendous against any team with the pulse, the second half of the year. And it was still amazing. They got in. Who cares? Yep. So the Sixers, you know, they make the playoffs now after losing in the second round a million times. And rightfully so, it's like, who gives a shit? Yeah. Who cares? Well, and baseball is also weird because it's so fucking random. Like everything about baseball is random to the point where three games, you really can't determine who is a better team.

So you have a shit, even though everything that you said about them struggling in the second half is true. Expectations are low. We're playing with house money. It's just great to be exciting again. But by the way, they probably still have like a 40 to 45% chance of winning the series just because baseball is completely random in the short term. I was seeing one study where a best of seven

series in the NBA, the better team wins by record 80% of the time. Feels about right. In order

to get the better team winning 80% of the time, you'd have to have a baseball series of, I think

it was like 75 games, which

clearly nobody's suggesting that you play a 75 game playoff series. But in order to strip out

luck and randomness, like you would have to play a lot more games than three. Now, the

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