NBA Statistics By Team

76ers Offense Overview

Currently, there is a behind-the-scenes debate between The Sixer Sense guys about some of the nuanced possibilities of the rotations, should the Markelle Fultz revenge tour go as planned. As this is looked at and deliberated, this question came to mind: “who are the most critical offensive pieces on the Philadelphia 76ers? If you said Ben Simmons or Joel Embiid, you are correct. Therefore, for the purposes of this review, we will leave them out. We can’t say enough about Simmons physical gifts, and natural instincts for the game. Nor can we look past the skill set JoJo brings to the game. However, for now, we will leave it at that. For all these items, the individual numbers will not be included. Instead, they will be reviewed and a determination about a combined stat for each player will be made, ranked, then shared with you in the form of a summary.

76ers Defense Overview

Defense still wins championships, or in the Sixers’ case, prevents you from winning them. The organization truly believes it had all the necessary talent to play for a title last season, but its typically sturdy defense suffered breakdowns at the worst possible times during the playoff exit at the hands of Boston. “The end game is this, as I said, you learn where you finish you need to begin,” head coach Brett Brown said this week. “The three-point shot is offensively driving everything. How do we keep Joel Embiid on the floor when you’re playing against five-out? How does he guard (Al) Horford? How would he guard Draymond Green? How would he guard, pick another stretch guy where they’ve got five guys that can shoot threes? We’re trying to anticipate that environment and we’re practicing now on how to keep him more close to the rim. He’s the best rim protector in the NBA.” The Celtics figured out that if they pulled Embiid away from the basket with capable three-point shooting bigs, their ball-handlers could attack the paint. It worked to the tune of 106.4 points per game throughout the series. While only slightly above the 103.4 the Sixers allowed to the Miami Heat, in a second-round series that saw three of their four losses decided by five points or less, every single point proved to be crucial. Now the man tasked with helping the team adapt to opponents’ versatile attacks is Billy Lange. The assistant has taken over defensive duties after Lloyd Pierce left for the head coaching job in Atlanta. “He’s obsessed with winning,” T.J. McConnell said of Lange. “He works tirelessly on how he can make our defense better. We all respect that and want to learn the new stuff that he’s trying to put in.” Those new schemes Lange has cooked up are all about pushing the envelope on the defensive end. They might not be the most conventional, but the Sixers know today’s NBA of position-less basketball is anything but conventional. “As soon as we lost and you start really paying attention and figuring out what we have, this study, this belief, and it’s been challenged all over the place, where we’re trying some things a little differently,” Brown said. “We could experience some pain initially, but I feel like to get where we want to go you’re gonna have to do that. We don’t want to coach afraid. We want to be bold with what we think and why we think it and be committed to doing it.”

Team Defense Leaders