So… What Exactly Are the Sixers? at LinesMaker

So… What Exactly Are the Sixers?

From SBNation’s excel­lent Six­ers’ blog Lib­erty Ballers (par­don the exten­sive block­quote, but I need it for context):

Den­ver, Atlanta, Miami. That was the “tough stretch” Jor­dan wrote about early last week. Finally, after 13 games where the oppo­nents win­ning per­cent­age was a lowly .371, they’d play some actual com­pe­ti­tion. Now, we’d find out if this team really had some mar­bles or if they were pulling the wool over our eyes with deceiv­ing teami­ness. 79% of you voted that they would win at least two of those three games.

Well, you know what hap­pened. A crush­ing over­time loss to Den­ver at the spite­ful hands of Andre Miller kicked it off. Next, the the Hawks came to town and it looked like they were going to upend the Six­ers as well before a sec­ond half hur­ri­cane came through and blew Atlanta out of the water. And then last night, in what was the tough­est game sched­uled, a road game in Miami on the sec­ond night of a back-to-back, the defense couldn’t stop LeBron James and Chris Bosh, allow­ing them to pull away late in the third due to coach­ing mis­cues and front­court abandonment.

So where do we stand now? At 11–5, they have a com­mand­ing lead over the Atlantic, that much is cer­tain. And with the 2nd place Knicks deal­ing with injuries and chem­istry issues, a 5-game lead this early lets them breathe a lit­tle bit. But in terms of their place in the East come play­off time, have you got­ten any indi­ca­tion that they could beat any of the bet­ter teams? Or does the record speak for itself and they’re still legit? I’m just inter­ested in what you think, con­sid­er­ing that the only two teams over .500 the Six­ers have beaten are the Al Horford-less Hawks and the Danny Granger-less Pac­ers. The next best team they defeated is the 6–9 Suns. Just some­thing to think on…

via Re-Assessing the Six­ers After The Three Game Test — Lib­erty Ballers.

When you fol­low the league to the extent many of us do, that is, to a borderline-obsessive, even-beat-writers-think-we-should-get-a-life extent, you tend to get irri­tated with this idea that the end results tend to val­i­date the pre­con­ceived notions.

To wit, the Philadel­phia 76ers were con­sid­ered a mediocre team before the start of the sea­son, losses to top teams proved that they are such despite their record, and an inevitable first or second-round elim­i­na­tion will cement that as their iden­tity. Except the Six­ers aren’t a mediocre team. They’re a very good team that lost to the hottest team in the West out­side of OKC (the Nuggets just went 4–0 in a four-games-in-five-night road trip with injuries,which is insane), and arguably the best team in the league. Fur­ther­more, you watch enough 20-point losses, you learn which feel like 20-point losses and which don’t. The Six­ers hung with the Heat. They made some plays. The Heat sim­ply over­pow­ered them because when the Heat are engaged, and not doing… what­ever they were doing on that three-game road trip… they are nigh on unstoppable.

The Six­ers are extremely well coached this sea­son. And while it’s a vir­tual lock that Philadelphia’s bench unit will not con­tinue their insane pace, they still have excep­tional depth. Andre Iguo­dala took six shots against the Heat. For com­par­i­son, Joel Anthony took nine Sat­ur­day night. This isn’t to say the Six­ers are as good as the Heat. They aren’t. They’re going to lose in the sec­ond round to either Chicago or Miami in all like­li­hood. But the Six­ers’ lack of con­sis­tent com­pe­ti­tion cre­ates a sig­nif­i­cantly small sam­ple size, and we shouldn’t toss out their superb play against weak teams, because some of the best teams strug­gle with poor teams. Con­sis­tency is the mark of real value in this league, and the Six­ers have been strik­ingly con­sis­tent. Their effort level doesn’t fluc­tu­ate game-to-game, half-to-half, quar­ter to quar­ter. They’re com­mit­ted to one another, have bal­ance, speed, depth and youth.

You can write the obit­u­ary for the Six­ers now, bar­ring one of the most mirac­u­lous runs in NBA his­tory, but that doesn’t mean that the shot­gun, first-glance per­cep­tions we had in pre­sea­son reveal the iden­tity of this team.

You have to watch Philadel­phia to under­stand Philadelphia.

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more NBA news see: So… what exactly are the Six­ers?.

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