In today's episode of The Sixers Beat, Rich and I preview the Sixers' first round playoff series against the Washington Wizards, going over how the Sixers should defend Bradley Beale and Russell Restbrook, why Joellenbeat is too good for the Wizards, what to watch out for that could swing the series and finally give our predictions.

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Enjoy the podcast. All right. Welcome, everybody. This is Derek Bodner, joined by Rich Hoffman on the Sixers Beat, part of the Athletics Podcast Network.

We have an opponent. We have a first round opponent. The Sixers will play the 34 and 38 Washington Wizards.

Game one is Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m.

Game two is Wednesday at 7 p.m.

And then it goes on from there.

Saturday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Sunday would be the rest of the schedule, depending on what is needed.

How you doing, Rich?

I'm good, you know.

We finally have some certainty.

We have some dates.

I like the 1 o'clock Sunday start.

It's like I made the joke on Twitter that it's like a bad NFC East game where we get it over with early in the day.

Maybe it'll be a bad Eastern Conference playoff game too. I think Sixers fans would probably hope that it would be considered a bad

one in terms of just at least being uncompetitive. But yeah, it's ready to get this thing going.

Yeah, you knew they weren't going to give the one eight seed the primetime matchups, which is not something we're used to because the Sixers are not the one-seed all that often. But they are playing the Wizards, the Wizards, who I think if you would go back, okay, so I think the toughest matchup out of those four teams would have been a healthy Boston team. Boston is not healthy, so scratch that went off the table. I think the second toughest probably most people would have said was the Wizards. Maybe some people, the Pacers, you know, the Pacers, if they get healthy and they were without Carous Levert. But if they had gotten healthy, maybe they'd figured some stuff out. They probably had the most talent, or at least most depth, more depth than Washington. But Washington, because of the way they ended the season, I think it was a 17 and 5 sprint to the end to make their season respectable and to put them into that eight seed. You know, I think at one point we were talking about whether or not Bradley Beale would request a trade. They were looking so bad at the start of the season. So they turned it around. And because of Beale, because of Westbrook and the way he has turned it around, I think, not that you should be nervous of the series, don't get me wrong. I think when we get there, I'll probably pick them in five, just because I feel guilty ever picking a sweep. I don't think the Sixers should be really tested, but I do think this was of the four,

this was probably of taking health into consideration.

This was probably maybe the most,

or at least the highest variance of the four.

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