The Philadelphia 76ers are still a work in progress, but they have shown marked improvement on defense this season.
The Philadelphia 76ers have kept no secrets about the direction of their franchise over the past two seasons. The Sixers’ front office wants to be near the bottom of the NBA, because with fewer wins comes more ping pong balls, which means a higher percentage of getting the number one overall pick.
Philadelphia has justified their current roster by selling the idea of a future contender, and it has come with it plenty of objections. They are purposely losing, they aren’t building a winning culture, Kentucky could beat them — these are just a few of the criticisms (or in the case of losing to Kentucky, the laziest hot take on the internet) that have been thrown the 76ers way since their rebuilding project began. Debating Philadelphia’s path to success should be left aside for another time. Actually, it should be thrown in a dumpster fire, because debating the issue doesn’t matter unless a realistic alternative for the lottery presents itself.
General manager Sam Hinkie has done an above average job ridding the Sixers of bad contracts, and starters from the old regime, while acquiring a high number of draft picks and players are low, short-term contracts. However, tearing down a team is the easy part, building it back up into a contender is where we’ll find out how much of a genius Hinkie really is.
So far, the 76ers have only won 37 games over the past two seasons (as of April 8th). It would be easy to dismiss the team as a bottom feeder, but one area the 76ers have shown considerable improvement from last season to today is from their defense.
Yes, it seems absurd to think a 18 win team is good defensively, but currently Philadelphia ranks 11th in defensive rating at 104.3, and 18th in points allowed at 100.4. They rank 15th in opponent field goal, and 3-point percentage, with teams shooting 44.6 and 34.8 percent respectively.
These numbers don’t make a strong case for Philadelphia as a top half defensive team, but it’s a huge step forward from last season. In 2013-14, they ranked 26th in defensive rating at 109.9, and 30th in points allowed at 109.9 per game. They ranked 26th in opponent field goal percentage (47.1) and 25th in opponent 3-point percentage (37.0). While the Sixers shouldn’t be considered a defensive juggernaut, these improvements are impressive considering the roster has continued to see major overhauls between the end of last season and now.
Most striking however, are the amount of points Philadelphia allows in wins. Last season, Philadelphia allowed an average of 103.2 points in their 19 wins. In wins this season, they have only allowed 87.2 points per game. For comparison, the Golden State Warriors, considered by many the league’s best defensive team, allow 96.6 points in wins. Obviously, Philadelphia is not the better defensive team. It’s a smaller sample size with the 76ers, and that number would undoubtedly be higher if they had even twice the amount of wins. What it does tell however is that when Philadelphia is executing their defensive system at a high level, they are incredibly hard to score on. The problem is they just haven’t been able to execute that well defensively enough.
It’s also important to consider who Philadelphia has beaten. Arguably their biggest win of the season was an 89-81 home victory against the Washington Wizards on February 27th, but Washington was missing Paul Pierce and Kris Humphries. There’s also the 96-81 home victory over the New Orleans Pelicans on January 16th, but Anthony Davis didn’t play that night. Beating the Atlanta Hawks 92-84 on March 7th sounds impressive, but Atlanta rested three starters that night. Beyond those three games, Philadelphia has picked up multiple wins against lowly Minnesota, Denver, New York, and Detroit. In other words, the 76ers typically win on nights they catch a good team without key players, or when they are matched up against another bottom of the league lottery team.
The strength of their opponents in wins this season does lessen the impressiveness of only allowing 87 points a game, but it stacks up well against last season’s number of 103.2 points allowed in wins. That’s the most telling part — last season Philadelphia was winning because they were able to outscore their opponent, this season they are winning because they are playing strong defense. Considering they rank dead last in points per game and offensive rating this season, the case could be made that they would have 5-10 more wins if their offensive was ranked somewhere between 15th and 20th.
And that’s why Philadelphia’s defensive improvement is encouraging. Despite having a roster largely consisting of fringe NBA players and D-League call-ups for the past two seasons, they have improved from arguably the worst defensive team in the league to one that is league average. The addition of Nerlens Noel has helped (as fellow writer Russell Hodges points out here), but a lot of credit should go to head coach Brett Brown for devising a defensive system that can thrive despite a limited roster.
While the 76ers have plenty to improvement to make before they can compete for an Eastern Conference Playoff seed (though in the East, they probably won’t have to get a whole lot better), Brown and his coaching staff has been able to get a limited roster to buy in on defensive and play it much more effectively than last season. If the coaching staff can continue to get his team to buy-in as the team continues to rebuild, it could payoff in upcoming seasons when there is enough talent on the roster to compete every night.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
