Why the second unit decides the first month

Every preview of this Sixers season will be about the stars, and every preview will be wrong about where the first month is decided. The starters will be fine. The second unit is where October lives.

The reason is the schedule. Eleven of the first fourteen games come in stretches of three in four nights, which means the starters sit the second night of back-to-backs whether the coach likes it or not.

You do not win November with your starters. You survive it with your bench and then find out what you have.

The bench is untested and, in two spots, unnamed. That is not a crisis. It is the actual question of the season, and it deserves the attention the stars are about to get instead.