Don’t Fall For It

Beckett tries to escape the hope cycle that the Sixers put us in every year and truly evaluate this team for what it is.

Man, the Sixers don’t make it easy on you. All the good vibes you could have in a season, and as a reward, we Sixers fans are blessed with a Paul George suspension, a Jared McCain trade, and a part 638 to the Joel Embiid injury saga — and that’s even before the absolute embarrassment they provided for the loyal Fly the Process fandom. (Of course, they did respond by trouncing a quality Timberwolves team and blowing out the Pacers, but I view that as more of a sadistic fandom methodology, trying to pull us back in with an unpredictable win every once in a while so they can hit us with another version of the Pelicans game as soon as possible.)

There’s a peddling of hope every year — “Just wait until Joel comes back, and we start to find our rhythm for the second half of the season” — and we can sometimes talk ourselves into embracing that hope, believing that, just maybe, this team can get it done… “It,” of course, being finally breaking through the glass ceiling and appearing in the conference finals, and maybe if the NBA gods were so kind, beating a good team on the way there.

But is there any evidence backing that statement this year? Not really.

We’re in unprecedented territory this year for overall performance for the Sixers. Outside of last season’s disaster, the Sixers have typically been at least in the top third of the league by net rating and have a reasonable argument to being better than their record suggests. This year, the Sixers are 14th in net rating, smack dab in the middle of the NBA (+0.7 net rating) — and it’s not even just one side of the ball that needs to be shored up; they are middle of the pack on both offense (13th) and defense (15th). Since 2017, with Joel at least marginally more available in previous years, the Sixers have only been below 10th once (11th in 2018-19) and never had a net rating below +2.6.

You all see me use net rating a lot in these articles as a measure of team strength, so let’s use this time to back up that characterization and explore the Sixers’ role within it. Since 2000, championship-winning teams have averaged a +7.2 net rating and a 3rd place ranking among all teams in net rating. There are outliers, such as 2010-11 Dallas Mavericks or 2000-01 Los Angeles Lakers, both of whom ranked 8th (yes, the team that beat the Sixers in the Finals had one of the lowest net ratings in the last 25 years… but of course), but the Sixers aren’t even hitting those levels of performance.

Now, the Sixers have had chances in previous years: ranking 4th in 2017-18 (+4.6 net rating) for the original Celtics loss in our first real year of Joel and Ben, 5th in 2020-21 (+5.5) when we lost to the Hawks (in my mind, an even worse series loss than the Raptors in 2018-19 — at least the Raptors were really good), and 3rd in 2022-23 (+4.4) when we lost to the Celtics in seven (also a brutal loss, but the Celtics were the top team in the NBA all year to be fair). This year, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be one of those chances.

However, winning the championship is likely a pipe dream, as we are all aware, and not something we should be talking about after losing to the Pelicans by 15, so let’s shift this to a standard of success we are all much more familiar with: making the conference finals! Surely there’s some hope in just meeting that bare minimum benchmark? Nope.

Since 2000 (which is 25 years and 100 teams), there have only been two exceptions to having +2.0 net rating or better in the conference finals. The first is the 2022-23 Miami Heat (-0.5 net rating), aka. Jimmy Butler’s Linsanity run out of the play-in tournament. The second is the 2017-18 Cleveland Cavaliers (1.0 net rating), aka. Peak LeBron James with one of the craziest carry jobs we’ve seen ever in any playoff run.

We don’t have peak Jimmy Butler. We don’t have peak LeBron. To even hit the outlier outcome of success — 2% of all teams since 2000 from the numbers above — we need the corpse of Embiid to go on an unprecedented tear that will then live on in the annals of NBA history. That’s not a plan, that’s a prayer. The hope cycle only works if the numbers leave room for delusion. This year, they don’t. It’s not happening guys.

If we get to the playoffs at all at this point, we are going to have to play one of Detroit, Boston, New York, or Cleveland (more than likely two if we want to make the conference finals). All would categorize as beating a good team if we were to get a win, but at this point in the season, I’m having a hard time seeing the evidence that we’d truly be able to do so. I will root for it regardless, and when the time comes, I will almost definitely try to talk myself (and potentially you all as readers of this column) into thinking we have a chance.

But floating in the back of my head the whole time will just be the conclusion that this isn’t a contender waiting to wake up. It’s a middle-of-the-pack team hoping for a miracle. And hoping for miracles isn’t a strategy.