Philly Front Office

Were you worried that the Embiid-less Sixers might galvanize and find a spark to beat the surely worse Chicago Bulls last night? It’s funny looking back now, isn’t it? We were so naive. The final score was 142-110 and folks, it wasn’t even that close. The Sixers trailed by 50 with 3 minutes to go against a team that had lost 6 in a row. Truly unthinkable levels of embarrassment after this one. For those of us staring dead-eyed into the flames of futility, this was wonderful.

Technically, the lottery odds didn’t change last night as we stayed in the 6th seed (from the bottom) but symbolically, getting annihilated by one of the biggest suiters for our spot, this meant everything. Around the league, the Nets lost to league-worst Wizards, the Blazers beat the Jazz, and the Hornets were throttled worse than the Sixers. Two days ago, the Raptors continued their slow gains up the standings and now sit just two away from flipping the 5th seed.

Lottery Odds

1 – 9%

2 – 9.2%

3 – 9.4%

4 – 9.6%

6 – 8.6%

Total – 45.8 % chance to keep the pick (no change)

Playoff Odds

Now a healthy 2.5 games behind Chicago for the play-in after last night’s clutch loss, we are still 1 game clear of #11 Brooklyn.

(Note: If the Sixers qualify for the play-in but don’t end up making the playoffs, they still have a chance to win the lottery)

Per Basketball Reference, our current odds to finish in each place are:

10 or better – 15.4%

11 or worse – 84.6% (17.7% drop!!!)

Odds of winning the play-in and making the playoffs – 2.7% (decrease of 4%!!!)

For all you completely jaded fans out there:

51.5% chance of missing the playoffs AND not keeping a draft pick (increase of 4%)

Games to Follow Coming Up

Numbers in parenthesis is the number of games ahead and behind the Sixers in the standings. Sixers record is 20-37 with 25 games to play.

February 25

• Boston at Toronto (-2 games) – might be asking a lot here
• San Antonio (+5) at New Orleans (-6) – With no Wemby, this is a sneaky interesting game for us. Go Pels!
• Charlotte (-6) at Golden State – Charlotte proved their worth last night, getting crushed by 42 and now have a back-to-back.

February 26

• Philly at New York – should be a blood bath
• Toronto (-2) at Indiana – back end of a back-to-back, but it’s winnable
• Portland (+4.5) at Washington (-10) – Let’s just have a nice Blazers win and knock both these teams off the list
• OKC at Brooklyn (+1) – Need Brooklyn to get some wins, but this won’t be it
• LAC at Chicago (+2.5) – Chicago might be feeling good after playing us, so who knows
• Sacramento at Utah (-6) – Utah is too good at being bad to screw this up.

Back to survey the wreckage on the morning of the 27th.