Tonight, the Sixers will take on the Guangzhou Long-Lions at 7 p.m. ET at the Wells Fargo Center to kick off preseason play, putting a cap on their brief training camp.

As we set off to begin the next phase of the team’s journey toward the most anticipated regular season in decades (which starts Oct. 23 against the Celtics), here are a few leftover thoughts from camp.

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Official measurements released

Starting this season, in a push for increased transparency, the NBA will release player heights (and ages), as measured by each team. The Sixers shared the data before Saturday’s scrimmage.

#sixers height measurements, without shoes.

— Derek Bodner (@DerekBodnerNBA) October 5, 2019

— Derek Bodner (@DerekBodnerNBA) October 1, 2019

Most of the reaction centered on the shock at players coming in under their previously listed heights, but this was to be expected. Perhaps the biggest surprise to many was Joel Embiid, who came in at 6 feet and 11.75 inches.

Most, but not all, players who enter the league are measured at the league’s annual pre-draft combine, where the NBA records a player’s height with and without shoes. But while we have this data at our disposal, the actual heights the NBA lists on their rosters and in media guides have always been a bit of a sham.

For the most part, when you hear “a 6-foot guard from Georgetown” echoed over the arena PA system or see a measurement listed on the team website, those heights tend to veer closer toward the “in shoes” measurement. But even there, it’s not like teams were obligated to use that height. If Kevin Garnett wanted to be a 6-foot-11 forward rather than a 7-footer, Kevin Garnett was listed at 6-foot-11. There was a lot of latitude.

Using “in shoes” as a starting-off point was always a bit absurd anyway. As someone who followed the NBA Draft and the pre-draft combine closely while working with DraftExpress, I started to notice the amount of height that shoes added varied pretty wildly. For some, “in shoes” height was an inch taller than their “without shoes” measurement. For others, it was two inches. There was no standardized shoe used when taking measurements.

As a result, our perception of players’ actual height became fundamentally skewed. You could have two players who both measured 6-foot-4 without shoes at the combine, but Player A wore a thicker shoe and then fudged the numbers a bit to look like a 6-foot-6 player. Player B wore a more normal-sized shoe, rounded down and became a 6-foot-5 player. But they were the same height.

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For the most part, those initial “without shoes” measurements taken at the draft combine were lost to the annals of time and the inaccurate measurements became the status quo, repeated often enough until they were considered the truth. And that’s even for the players who we had measurement data on. Some players (typically high draft picks who did not attend the combine like Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons) never had NBA measured data released to the public. Their heights became urban legends.

So if the data look off, it’s a two-part equation. First, what you’re looking at is a “without shoe” measurement, where what you previously likely had in your head was the measurement with shoes. If you’re stunned that Tobias Harris is a 6-foot-7.5-inch forward, add 1.5 inches for the height of his shoe and you’re back at what you’re used to. Second, the new data are actually based off a measurement rather than hearsay and conjecture, which is good. At least, it would be good if every team were truthful and precise about the measurement data it submitted.

If you take a look at the table below — which compares the heights released on Saturday with how each player measured, without shoes, at their respective combines — not much new information has actually been released. Most of the measurements are actually pretty close to what we got years ago. The public is now just using the more accurate height.

But why use the measurement without shoes if basketball is played with shoes? Because adding in a variable is silly to a measurement that is supposed to be precise. Whether a player wore thick- or thin-soled shoes on the day of his combine is entirely irrelevant to how he will perform on the court. How tall he is compared to the players he will compete against is (more*) relevant. The public, theoretically, has more precise information now. The problem is we were using fundamentally flawed data in the past, and that flawed data skewed both our perception and how we interpret this new data.

Tl;dr: Seeing this data and saying “Al Horford can’t play center, he’s not even 6-foot-10!” is the wrong way to look at Saturday’s news. In actuality, Horford plays at what we previously thought of as a 6-foot-11 player. The real news is we now have data on Simmons (who is the Sixers’ second-tallest rotation player) and Embiid, who, given his previously cited 7-foot-2 height, we would’ve expected to be a shade taller than 7 feet without shoes — rather than the shade under 7 feet he actually measured. He’s still really tall.

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*I say more relevant, because it’s still not all that useful. Standing reach and wingspan are more relevant, but less well-known, indicators of a player’s functional size on the court.

Brand on Embiid’s load management plan

Everybody agrees that making sure Joel Embiid is near his peak when the real season begins in May is toward the top of the Sixers’ priority list this season. We’re still waiting to see exactly how that will be accomplished.

“We’ll be thoughtful, strategic, aligned with Joel. It’s a partnership. We talk to him,” Elton Brand said prior to Saturday’s scrimmage. “I feel we’re a championship-caliber team, and for us to reach that goal, it has to start with Joel in the postseason being the best Joel possible.”

While a setting like a preseason press conference discussing load management strategy is one that tends to be light on details and heavy on expressed goals, Brand did drop one important tidbit of information: Embiid could play both ends of back-to-back sets in the regular season, at least some of the time.

“It’s possible. It’s possible that he gets out there,” Brand said. “If he presents well (before the game) and he feels good, we’re not gonna hold him back.”

Embiid has expressed a desire to play in more games than the 64 he appeared in last year. He’s also voiced that one of the team’s strategies used last year — where it gave Embiid the game off if there were off days on both sides of it, giving Embiid an extended four- or five-day rest period — was one he didn’t feel worked. With the possibility of Embiid playing in both ends of back-to-backs, it’ll be interesting to see how the Sixers add in rest periods to prevent overworking Embiid, like we saw at the beginning of last season.

Rotations tonight

The rotations for tonight’s preseason opener may look a bit different than what you’ll see in the regular season, or even later on in the preseason when Brown looks to get into a rhythm with his rotations. (Read Mike’s thoughts on the state of the rotations here.)

“Tomorrow, you won’t see (the normal rotation). I’m gonna rotate the team and there’s not a ton of method to madness, except to get people some minutes,” Brown said Monday. “I’ll pull out of some stuff probably halfway through the third period and look at some bench guys. But on the weekend, it’ll go back to, like, let’s start to get some stuff right in how we sub and play this.”

(Top photo: Rocky Widner / Getty Images)