NBA Saturday: Greg Frank picks the 76ers vs Trail Blazers -- with Embiid sitting, expect a Lillard-fueled shootout

2-2 Friday night, 12-7 overall.

Sixers (+1.5) @ Trail Blazers (223.5)

Pick: Trail Blazers -1.5

The Sixers begin a west-coast trip on Saturday night as the only undefeated team left in the NBA. You can expect that to change by night’s end. We mentioned in our Sixers-Hawks handicap earlier this week how highly-skilled offensive point guards have given the Sixers all sorts of problems the last few seasons. With that in mind, holding Trae Young to 7-20 from the field was probably a victory for Philadelphia, although Young still managed to put up 25 points and the Sixers did not cover in a 105-103 victory. Expect at least 35 big ones from Damian Lillard tonight in Portland and with Joel Embiid serving the first game of his two-game suspension, I wouldn’t feel great about the Sixers ability to keep up. Higher-scoring games are going to be the way to beat the Sixers this year and it’s a lot easier to see this game becoming a shootout with Philly’s best defender not in the lineup. Portland is also a sneaky good home court advantage as only Philadelphia and Indiana have covered the spread at home at a better clip than the Trail Blazers since the start of the 2016-17 season. It’s not a good spot for the Sixers tonight at all and only needing to lay 1.5 to back Portland feels cheap, but we won’t complain.

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