Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Detroit -1½ over Philadelphia

7:30 PM EST. The standings say this is a meeting of the Eastern Conference's top two teams, with unbeaten Philadelphia at 3-0 hosting 2-0 Detroit, but the schedule says something else entirely. Philadelphia is playing its third game in four nights and the second night of a back-to-back, coming off a 127-116 win over Milwaukee on Saturday night in which Joel Embiid logged 36 minutes on his way to a 28-point triple-double. Embiid said before the weekend that he would play only one of the two games, and that game was Saturday. Detroit, meanwhile, has not played since Friday, when it went to Miami and won 128-111. In October, fresh legs against tired ones is not a small edge — it is usually the whole game.

Detroit's early-season profile fits the spot, too. The Pistons opened with a home win over Boston and the road win at Miami, and the common thread has been long-range shooting: 42.3 percent from three on 39 attempts a game, with Duncan Robinson taking 9.5 threes a night and making 5.0 of them, leaving Cade Cunningham to create the rest with 8.0 assists a game. That shooting meets a Philadelphia weakness that has nothing to do with effort: the 76ers are getting crushed on the glass, with opponents collecting 53.7 rebounds a game against their 43.0, the heaviest concession in the league. Detroit also swept all four meetings between these clubs last season, winning in Philadelphia by three and by 23. The honest discount on that sweep is that Embiid missed two of those games, and this Philadelphia team has since added Jaylen Brown and LeBron James — but if Embiid sits tonight, as his own weekend plan suggests, that discount mostly disappears.

The counters are real and they start with Detroit's own injury report. Jalen Duren is out with a right hamstring strain suffered in Friday's win at Miami, and Ausar Thompson is questionable with an ankle sprain from the same game. Paul Reed moved to centre after Duren went down and finished with 19 points and 11 rebounds, and John Collins took minutes there as well, so Detroit has a ready small-ball answer — and Reed and Collins can attack exactly the glass weakness described above. Philadelphia's defence is also genuinely good, with a 100.0 defensive rating and opponents held to 9.7 made threes a game, fifth-fewest in the league, and Tyrese Maxey at 28.7 points a game with some of the heaviest minutes in the league can keep the 76ers in any game. Detroit's sloppiness is the other worry: the Pistons give it away 18.5 times a game, and Philadelphia averages 10.7 steals. But a rested team that shoots like this, against a team on its third game in four nights that cannot rebound and may be without its best player, is the right side even laying a small number.

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