James Ennis has been cleared and is available to play tonight

The Sixers have received plenty of bad news recently with the aggravation of a left knee injury to their superstar Joel Embiid. This time they get a bit of good news. Per Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium, James Ennis is available to play tonight in game 2 against the Brooklyn Nets. Trailing 1-0 in the best of 7 game series, the Sixers’ rotation was already dangerously thin. It didn’t help when Ennis injured his quad with a contusion weeks ago. To make matters worse he aggravated the injury and missed even more time. But the perimeter player acquired in a trade around the deadline from the Houston Rockets might be able to provide a spark off the bench.

Ennis won the “quiet tournament” head coach Brett Brown discusses occasionally. Coach Brown wanted to see who would be the most reliable among Ennis, Jonathon Simmons and Furkan Korkmaz. Ennis won that fight for minutes and a playoff rotation handily as he is the only one of the three who can reliably help on both ends of the floor.

Without him, the rotation was at times ugly. J. Simmons simply has not been reliable, and despite his playoff experience in San Antonio years ago, he hasn’t been able to provide any floor-spacing since injuring his wrist while with Orlando.

Ennis, a native of Ventura, California was a high jumper and won the Western State Conference and Southern California Regional high school championship clearing a 6’11 mark with his hops. Hopefully he’s feeling well enough to show some of that to the Nets tonight. It would be just in time to avoid falling 2-0.

It would be cool if they used Ennis as well as high-flying rookie Zhaire Smith tonight.