Four Weird Sixers Stats and How To Interpret Them
Four Weird Sixers Stats and How To Interpret Them
Four numbers to know to impress your friends.
Mike O’Connor is the best O’Connor in basketball writing. Previously of The Athletic, you can find Mike on Twitter @MOConnor_NBA.
We are now safely at the point in the season where stats are no longer a product of infinitesimal sample sizes, and yet there are still a few Sixers stats that make my brain hurt. Here, I’ll break down a handful of numbers that I’ve found, how I’m interpreting them, and what we should learn from them. Let’s begin.
#1: The Sixers have a worse point differential -- and rank worse on both offense and defense -- than they did last season
According to Cleaning the Glass -- which unlike other stats sites, filters out garbage time -- the Sixers rank 15th in the league in offensive rating compared to 12th last season, and ninth in defensive rating compared to seventh last year. Their net rating of +1.9 is worse than last year’s mark of +2.7. Huh?
AU wrote a piece recently dissecting the astonishing fact that the Sixers started last season 20-7. But this isn’t just a calculation of the first 27 games -- these numbers include the entire trainwreck that was last season.
When reflecting on last year’s team, there is certainly a dynamic at play where the horrible aesthetic of that team’s play style / fit gives the impression that the team was less competitive than it was. They did win 59 percent of their games. However, I’m still calling b.s. on this stat for a couple of reasons.
For starters: the Sixers have made quite a habit this season of building enormous leads, letting the lead slowly slip away out of laziness, and then closing out the game with a 7-10 point win. Last season also featured quite a few 7-10 point wins over mediocre teams, but of a much different variety -- absolute rock fights in which the Sixers pulled away with free throws at the end. Let’s not kid ourselves, getting up by 25 against the Bulls and letting them slowly crawl back against bench lineups is objectively more convincing than scratching and clawing to get ahead all game before bumping the lead up to seven. And yet, both games count for the same in the point differential category.
Last year’s team never displayed the gear to even establish those types of leads and beat down on bad teams. There were an awful lot of wire-to-wire slugfests against the Knicks, Cavs, Hawks, etc. where it took maximum effort to earn a 5-10 point victory. This year’s team has displayed an ability to jump on those types of teams early and coast for the rest of the night.
The other thing that could be contributing ever so slightly is the four-game stretch in January in which the Sixers were half-quarantined due to Seth Curry’s COVID case. They were only completely decimated for two of those games, but missing a major chunk of your rotation for 12.5 percent of the season (four out of 32 games) is enough to fudge up the numbers.
I am quite sure that there are statistically inclined people reading this and thinking that I’m wrong about this -- that net rating is net rating and that trying to add context is foolish. Sorry, it’s not. If you want to fetishize net rating, go root for the Bucks. It certainly says something about this team that they don’t have a higher point differential, but it’s at least partly explained by their failure to sustain big leads against mediocre teams, and I can’t count that as a major strike against their credibility as contenders.
#2: The Sixers rank 28th in the league in 3-point attempt rate and 17th in 3-point percentage
This is a stat that many have pointed out in recent weeks. But isn’t it strange how the floor feels 10 times more open than it did last year, and yet the Sixers shoot fewer 3s and make a smaller percentage of them than last year?
Part of the reason that the attempts are down is because of opponents’ willingness to defend the 3-point line more closely -- Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid are seeing less help in the lane because teams are staying glued to Seth Curry, Danny Green, etc., meaning fewer attempts. But another big contributing factor to this number is the sheer number of hesitant shooters on the team. Tobias Harris and Seth Curry, in particular, just don’t like chucking 3s without lots of space.
As far as percentage goes, I expect that number to increase eventually. The Sixers have a few high-volume shooters (namely Shake Milton, Mike Scott, and Furkan Korkmaz) shooting well below their career track records, and I have to expect that they’ll catch a hot streak soon enough.
This number will always be dragged down by the nature of having Simmons and Embiid as your best players. When you’re getting 2.8 3-point attempts from your two best players combined (all of them from Embiid), you’ll never rank among the league leaders in attempt rate. However, it is notable that the Sixers ranked 12th in 3-point attempt rate in 2018. While this year’s team has a somewhat different identity, you’d still like for their attempt rate to creep up higher to recapture the spacing that that year’s team enjoyed.
#3: The Sixers are turning the ball over less often with Joel Embiid on the floor
Of all the things Embiid has improved at this year, taking care of the ball is not one of them. He is coughing it up as much as ever, posting the almost exact same number of turnovers per 100 possessions as last year (5.0). Embiid is tied for 13th in the league in that category.
(Bonus stat: Dwight Howard is committing the exact same number of turnovers as Embiid on a per possession basis, despite the fact that he barely touches the ball. What the hell, Dwight?)
However: despite Embiid being a turnover machine, the Sixers turn it over less often as a team when he is on the floor. Per Cleaning The Glass, their turnover rate goes down by 1.5 percent (a significant difference) when Embiid is on the floor.
This dynamic also appeared in the 2017-18 season, and it’s pretty easily explained: the Sixers’ offense is so starved for shot creation, that they actually end up coughing it up more often when they don’t have Embiid to create. When Embiid hits the bench and the offense starts to revolve around Simmons, the Sixers’ offense turns completely disjointed, and the ball starts spraying all over the gym. So, next time you start to complain about Embiid’s turnovers, just remember: they’d be doing even worse if he were on the bench.
#4: The Sixers’ half court offense has been 9 points better per 100 possessions with Ben Simmons on the floor
The word on Ben Simmons has been pretty simple throughout his career: he’s electric in the open court, but far less effective and perhaps even detrimental to the half court offense (according to Jared Dudley, at least). This year, however, the stats don’t bear that out at all. The Sixers’ half court offense has been excellent with Simmons on the floor, and putrid with him off of it.
Now, before the Simmons stans start to celebrate, this stat is pretty easily explained away by fluky 3-point shooting. The Sixers are shooting 10.6 percent (!) better from deep with Simmons on the floor. Certainly, Simmons contributes to that number to some extent, as he creates quite a few open looks for his teammates. But 10.6 percentage points is outrageous. To illustrate how fluky this number is: last year, for example, the Sixers shot 4.6 percent worse from 3 with Simmons on the floor.
So, this one is a fun one, but it’s a fluke. If the hot shooting continues, great! But I don’t think we can take a victory lap on Simmons as a half court player because of it.