As the NBA approaches the All Star break, there is a major concern about the Philadelphia 76ers. They can’t beat the best teams in the league.
The Philadelphia 76ers were blown out by the Denver Nuggets 126 -110 on Saturday. The Nuggets won every quarter and dominated the Sixers.
Over the course of an 82-game season, a loss to a good team on the road is nothing to lose sleep over. It happens to the best of teams. But when it happens over and over again, when it becomes a trend, it’s something to pay attention to.
The 76ers have no problem beating the teams currently under .500 in the NBA. They’re 21-6 for a winning percentage of .778 against those teams. That shouldn’t be a shock. That’s the way it is supposed to happen, the good teams beat the bad teams.
But against teams that play at or above .500, the 76ers are a paltry 11-12 for a winning percentage of .478. This is a real concern, because the teams playing over .500 are the teams they’ll have to face in the playoffs. If they can’t beat the best teams now, how can they beat them in March and April?
The news is even worse when we examine Philly’s record against the elite teams, those with winning percentages over .600. These are the teams the 76ers would face in the second round of the playoffs and beyond. Against the elite teams, the 76ers have only won three of 12 games for a winning percentage of .250.
The 76ers record of 32-18 makes them one of the elite teams in the East. The others are the Milwaukee Bucks, Toronto Raptors, Indiana Pacers and Boston Celtics. The Sixers are 3-6 against those teams. They’re 0-2 against the Bucks, 1-2 against the Raptors and 0-2 against the Celtics, the team that knocked them out of the playoffs in the second round last year. The only .600 team that the Sixers have a winning record against (2-1) is the Pacers.
When we venture out West, the news gets even worse. The 76ers are 0-3 against teams in the Western Conference with a winning percentage over .600, and they haven’t even played the Golden State Warriors yet. Philadelphia has lost to the Denver Nuggets, the Portland Trail Blazers and the Oklahoma Thunder. The average score in those three games is 126-108.
We will find out a lot about the 76ers over the stretch of games before the 2019 All-Star Game. The Sixers play eight games before the break. Seven of those games are against teams playing above .500. Three of those games are against elite teams, or teams playing above .600 — the Warriors, Nuggets and Raptors.
I’m sure some of you are saying, “Well, of course they are going to do worse against the good teams and the elite teams.” Yes, that’s true. But to win an NBA championship, you have to be able to beat the elite teams.
As an example, let’s look at the Eastern Conference-leading Milwaukee Bucks. Against the teams over .500, the Bucks are 16-4. Against the over .600 teams, they are 8-4. It’s easy to look at that record and say, “The Bucks have a legitimate chance of winning the NBA title.” I don’t think you can say the same about the Sixers, at least not right now.
There is still a lot of season left and a lot of games against playoff-bound teams to play. But the Philadelphia 76ers need to show that they can beat the best, to have any shot at being the best.