Max sweats the Ariel Hukporti injury on PMTV

The new PMTV dropped and the 76ers were the main event, with the Sixers' new backup big man as the latest thing for a Philly fan to lose sleep over.

Pardon My Take

@PardonMyTake

Hukporti being injured won’t be the reason the 76ers fail @TwistedTea

Here's the actual damage. Hukporti tore his right Achilles 6 minutes into his 76ers debut, in the preseason opener against the Knicks, his old team. Nobody touched him. Karl-Anthony Towns, his former teammate, helped him off the floor, and he had surgery the next day. His season is over before it started.

On paper it's a depth move going bust. Philly gave the 23-year-old German center a 1-year, $3.4 million deal to play behind Joel Embiid and Adem Bona. He went 58th overall in 2024 and played 79 games over 2 seasons in New York, including the Knicks' 2025-26 title run, but he only got 9.2 minutes a night there. He was supposed to get a much bigger role in Philly.

So the take on the show is that Hukporti won't be the reason the Sixers fail, and that's probably right. The real worry is the same one it always is: does Embiid stay healthy? Losing the next big in line just means Philly has less cover if he doesn't. That's why a preseason injury to a backup can still take years off a Sixers fan's life, which is how the tweet describes what it did to Max. The rest of the room didn't help. All the helicopter talk is the running bit that's slowly killing him.

The Hukporti argument wasn't all PMTV had this week. It also has a guest-star segment: going by the tweet, Big Cat and PFT gave Bill Burr a tour of Barstool's Chicago office and stopped to show him a piece of history.

Viva La Stool

@VivaLaStool

Big Cat and PFT had to show Bill Burr a piece of history when they gave him a tour of Chicago HQ @thefarmersdog

The clip doesn't say what the piece of history is, so you'll have to watch the full episode. For the Sixers, the next step is finding minutes behind Embiid and Bona without Hukporti. For Max, it's hoping the helicopter jokes are over before the regular season starts. Don't count on it.