Philly Front Office

Our boys did their job. Last night the Flyers played their final game of the season in need of a regulation loss to finish 4th in the reverse standings. In a very fun 5-4 defeat to Buffalo, they not only lost but Matvei Michkov scored twice and Tyson Foerster reached goal number 25 on the season. Great job all around. The Sixers were tied with the Brooklyn Nets most of the end of the season but found a way to out lose a team that only had that one goal and were better equipped to TCB. Because of their heroics in losing 29 of the final 33 games, the Sixers finished 5th in the reverse standings. They put in the work, now we need to hope the gods of ping-pong ball randomness are in our favor.

Flyers

The NHL lottery is a little screwy, but most of the rules do not affect the Flyers. Only the top two choices are up for grabs and teams can only move up a maximum of 10 spots. By finishing 4th, the Flyers have 9.5% of picking 1st and a 9.5% chance of picking 2nd. Strangely, their most likely spot to pick is 5th at 44.6%., with the combined odds of at least one team jumping us outweighing our own obviously, even though no one below us has better individual odds.

The Flyers biggest problem is simply not enough fire power. After Michkov, there is no real star on the team. There are a lot of solid role players, but no one else to point to as even an all-star level talent let alone in the running for major hardware. The Flyers NEED to win the lottery, either first or second will do. Matthew Schaefer is expected to go #1, but he is a defenseman. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but center prospect Michael Misa is expected to go #2 and could be the guy the Flyers are looking for after an absolutely dominant OHL season. Both will be 18 next season and could provide the Flyers with the star power they desperately need.

On lottery day, what we need to look out for is simply any team jumping. If two jump, the dream of picking 1st or 2nd is over. It’s that simple. The 10 spot max rule wouldn’t affect our 4th spot position if it’s done by Montreal or Vancouver (15 and 16) but anyone else would push us down a spot.

Sixers

The NBA lottery picks the top 4 spots in the draft. For any other team this is pretty straight up. Not for the 76ers. Because the Sixers desperately needed to purge themselves of Al Horford years ago, we owe a top-6 protected pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder. You know this. By finishing 5th worst in the league we have about a 64% chance of keeping the pick and a 10.5% chance of picking either of 1, 2, 3, or 4. The real bitch of these odds though is that even though it is in our favor to keep the pick, the single most likely position we pick is 7th (meaning we don’t pick at all) at 26.7%. It’s scary hours!

While the Flyers need talent, the Sixers need hope. We are staring at a world where Joel Embiid is taking up about a 3rd of our team salary while not playing…for 4 YEARS!!! If we keep the player this year, that means we lose the pick next year (probably…unless things get REALLY bad) but at least we have someone to rebuild with. If not, then we get to keep next year’s pick and root for another year of abject failure (that likely won’t jive with Tyrese Maxey).

It will get a little complicated on draft day. Since 4 teams can jump, we have to look for possible jumpers right away but also until 4 actually jump we don’t know. If only one team jumps before the 7th selection is named, then we know we are in the clear. However, even if 3 teams jump, we would still have that 42.1% chance that we jumped too. We would only know that by the 7th pick unless all 4 jumpers already happened. The goal, as always, is to get to the commercial. If we make it to the commercial, we know we are at least top-3, we can regroup, and beg the karma gods for the remaining few seconds to bless us with their pity.

In The End

What always amazes me about math and probability is that though the odds truly matter, the final result can only be basically a yes or a no. Did the 4th or 5th pick win the lottery? That is the ultimate question. Last year the Atlanta Hawks won the lottery from the 10th spot. They had a 66% chance of selecting 10th and only a 3% chance of picking 1st. Had another team finished 10th, that team would have won. All the losses in the world don’t mean anything if you aren’t in the right spot in the end. You can only give yourself better odds, but you don’t know what position was the lucky one. It is almost like how you go your whole life not knowing what day on the calendar is your death day. Is it April 18 in some year down the road? You just don’t know.¹ So, what if 6th is the lucky draft spot this year and our final losses of the season in both sports actually hurt us? We just don’t know.

See you on May 5th (or 6th, WTF NHL?) and May 12th.

1. Sorry for getting morbid. ↩︎