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“Tell you the truth, I don’t even remember it.”
– Thaddeus Young, when asked about the last time his 76ers won a game
On Jan. 24, in Boston, a tip-in at the buzzer by Evan Turner gave the Philadelphia 76ers a 95-94 win over the Celtics, which raised their record on the season to 15-31. Not a great record by any stretch, but given that the O/U for 76ers wins in Las Vegas at the beginning of the season was 16½, it could definitely be said that the 76ers were exceeding modest expectations.
The 76ers, you might remember, were specifically fingered by a certain blogger at the start of the season as being a team that was tanking. They had traded their one decent player from last season, Jrue Holiday, to the New Orleans
These moves were clearly made with the future in mind. Philly had shed so much payroll in the offseason that they were actually well below the NBA salary floor at the start of this season. With a healthy Noel (and he has clamored of late that he wants to play a bit in the month of April) and the addition of a couple of high 1st round picks in the upcoming draft, there is some potential for improvement come the fall of 2014.
But for this season? Forget about it.
The 76ers were built to be bad. Built to be terrible, in fact, so as to maximize the possibility of landing a top slot in the NBA draft via the lottery. Just whatever you do, don’t call it tanking. Remember, teams in the NBA don’t tank:
“My understanding of tanking would be losing games on purpose. And there’s absolutely no evidence that any team in the NBA has ever lost a single game, or certainly in any time that I’ve been in the league, on purpose. And, to me, what you’re referring to I think is rebuilding. And I’m not sure it’s just a function of the collective bargaining agreement; I think there’s a balance with any team of the need to look out to the future and at the same time put a competitive product on the floor.”
– NBA Commissioner Adam Silver
And the players who were so clearly being set up to fail in Philly played with some pride and played hard at the start of the year. They actually beat Miami to start the season and went 3-0 out of the gate, but then they got flat-out murdered by Golden State at home and the reality started to set in. They have a rookie PG, an inefficient offense, and the defense has been a problem all season, as it is among the worst in the NBA. The first few months of their season saw several 4-game losing streaks here and there. The 76ers then had a nice little 4-game, Western winning streak at the turn of the New Year, which raised their record up to 12-21. Again, not great, but not nearly as awful as some people expected. After all, there were thoughts among NBA punditry that this team might not win 10 games all season.
And by the way, even though the Sixers had a record of 15-31, you could still apparently get action in Vegas on that O/U line of 16½ wins. Seems like an easy steal of a bet right there to take the over. All you need is two more wins, right? How hard could that be? It’s only two more wins. Surely any collection of professional athletes can cobble together two more wins, can’t they?
Well, apparently not. How hard can it be? Let me count the ways – 26 of them, in fact, and counting. The LOSE has, of course, taken a keen interest in the Sixers here as they’ve floundered about the past couple of months. Attempting to chronicle the plight of the Sixers just might be the ultimate act of self-torture. Come on along for the ride, but you’d best not scare easily.
Jan. 26
Atlanta comes to Philadelphia two days after the Sixers’ thrilling win in Boston. The Hawks promptly blast the Sixers 125-99 at the
Feb. 1
Bad teams generally lack depth and, as such, suffer when they are hit by injuries. In their 113-96 loss to the Pistons at Detroit, the Sixers’ generally promising rookie guard Michael Carter-Williams, who has produced some decent numbers despite his erratic shot and despite the fact his club has few legitimate offensive options, is forced to miss the game with an injury. The Sixers are already bad enough with Carter-Williams on the floor. Without him, they have no chance. Injuries have been part of the problem in Philly this year, and their depth wasn’t exactly stellar to begin with. The team has used a total of 21 players over the course of the season. It’s hard to develop any continuity and run a cohesive offense if the players are in need to being introduced on a daily basis. Not only has Nerlens Noel not played a game all year, but neither has Jason Richardson. Richardson used to be a dynamic and exciting player, but he is dead weight at this point in his career. He has a huge contract and the 76ers would’ve loved to move him somehow, but he got hurt before the season even began, which means they’ve basically been stuck with him all season. [EDIT: Make it 22 players, as Casper Ware signed a 10-day contract, wore a makeshift #17 on the back of his emergency jersey and was warmly welcomed by the Sixers in San Antonio: “Nice to meet you. Play defense. And make shots.”]
Feb. 3
Carter-Williams is back in the lineup in Brooklyn against the Nets and scores 21, but also commits 6 turnovers. The Sixers shoot 52.1% from the floor and are +8 on the boards, yet they lose 108-102 mainly because they turn the ball over 26 times. They manage to rally from 19 down late in the 3rd Quarter and cut it to two with under a minute to play ... only to turn the ball over one last time and seal their own fate. A spirited effort by the Sixers undone by sloppiness.
Feb. 5
Defense in Philly apparently means you go outside and build de fence around de field to keep de cows and de sheep in, because there isn’t a whole lot of defense evident in a 114-108 home loss to a Boston Celtics team that’s 27th in the league in offense and has made so many trades this year that the 2nd round pick in 2016 should be starting at the off-guard any day now. I think the Celtics current have four actual players and 17 future draft picks on their roster at the moment. This marks another 4-game losing skid for the Sixers. Growing pains for a young team, I suppose.
Feb. 7
Every single alarm bell about this team should’ve been going off after the Sixers lose 112-98 at home to a dreadful L.A. Lakers team missing stalwarts Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol and suddenly emergent scorer Nick Young. (I know, I can’t believe that I just said that, either.) The Lakers win with only nine healthy players, as they get 19 points from Steve Nash on his 40th birthday in one of the 11 games he has played all season. Weary Sixers coach Brett Brown explains this sorry performance at home by saying, “it appears we play better on the road.” The Marketing Department might have some trouble building an ad campaign around that one, Brett. I can see the billboard now: SIXERS BASKETBALL – WE’RE BETTER IN CLEVELAND! Oh look, a roadtrip coming up. Just what the club needs. Isn’t that right, Coach Brown?
Feb. 9
For a team that’s struggling (losers of 5 in a row), about the last thing you need right about now is a cross-country trip, followed by playing back-to-back nights against playoff teams. The Sixers show up in L.A. and put out a lame effort on Feb. 9 against the Clippers, trailing 46-15 after one quarter, trailing by 49 at the end of three, going on to lose 123-78, and then …
Feb. 10
Golden State beats them 123-80 the next night in Oakland. Back-to-back 40-pt. losses. But hey, the Sixers lost by 43 after losing by 45 the night before, so this counts as improvement, although the Warriors were so far ahead and went so far down the depth chart in this game that Marreese Speights went off for 32 pts. If Marreese Speights is owning you, your team is in trouble. There was a Sixers team in the early 1990s that came to Seattle not long after losing to the Kings by more than 50 in Sacramento, and promptly lost by more than 50 to the Sonics, as well. You’d be hard-pressed to find another team in the NBA that lost by more than 50 twice in a season. What is it about this franchise that drives it to such extremes? When you think of the Sixers, you think of some of the greatest players in the history of the game – Wilt Chamberlain, Dr. J, Moses Malone, Charles Barkley, Allen Iverson – and some great teams – the 1967-68 team went 68-13, an NBA record at the time, and won a title; the 1982-83 team also won the title and went 12-1 in the playoffs – but they have also had some of the more wretched seasons and results the league has ever seen.
Feb. 12
Here seems like an opportunity to get a win, since the opponent is Utah and the Jazz have been god awful this year. Alas, the Sixers get lit up by Alec Burks in the 4th Quarter, the Jazz prevail 105-100 in Salt Lake City and the Sixers limp into the all-star break on an 8-game losing streak.
Feb. 18
I would think that a 6-day mini-vacation might help the Sixers out. I would also think wrong. The Sixers get blasted 114-85 at home by the Cleveland Cadavers, who are terrible. This was the 5th straight win for the Cavs, and it got them to 21-33 – meaning that, 5 games earlier, the Cavs had essentially the same record as the Sixers, who are now 15-40 and have lost 9 in a row.
Feb. 21
Just in the nick of time to beat the Feb. 20 trade deadline, the Sixers made a couple of deals. Or, as Evan Turner and Spencer Hawes call it, the Sixers grant them parole. Turner, you may remember, tipped in the winning bucket in the Sixers last win some 28 days and about 18 paragraphs ago. The Sixers do Turner, who is basically their best player, a favour by trading him at the deadline to the Indiana Pacers, a team that actually knows what it’s doing. They also trade starting C Hawes to the Cavs. In exchange for two starters, they get two pairs of Converse All-Stars and a ham sandwich. Actually, they get former Pacer ace Danny Granger from Indiana, whom they promptly buy out and whom signs with the Clippers. From the Cavs they get Earl Clark, who they waive, and Henry Sims, who is tall. (That’s about all I can say about him.) Hmm, come to think of it, a ham sandwich might have been a better deal. At least it would taste good, whereas everything the Sixers do these days leaves a bad taste in the mouth. The NBA Trade Deadline is always the sports equivalent of Día de Muertos, as most of the mediocre teams clamor to acquire stiffs they do not want with big expiring contracts they can then cash in for cap room next year. The Sixers celebrate the NBA equivalent of Day of the Dead by going out and playing dead at home and losing 124-112 to the Dallas Mavericks. 10 in a row.
Feb. 24
Keep this up and the Sixers might actually catch the Milwaukee Bucks for the worst record in the league. The Bucks come to town and lay a 130-110 beatdown on the Sixers. Unlike Philly, who have intended to tank from the get-go, and have now all but finished the job with this recent series of trades, the Bucks actually had playoff aspirations at the start of the year. They also have about the most mismatched, ill-conceived roster in the NBA, which would explain why they are only 11-45 even after whoopassing the Sixers. In this game, the Sixers get torched for 25 on 7 treys by O.J. Mayo, the Bucks’ big, expensive off-season signing who has now become the Bucks’ big, expensive DNP, logging 6 straight games with no minutes in the middle of the season. How everyone in Milwaukee hasn’t gotten fired twice over by now is beyond me.
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| Front row seats at a Bucks-Sixers game make an excellent cure for insomnia |
Losing their 12th in a row, 101-90 to the woful Orlando Magic, means the Sixers have now also gone O-for-February. Yes, that’s 0-11 for the month. March has to be better, yes?
Mar. 1
March begins with a 122-103 loss to the Washington Buzzards. The Sixers close out an 0-5 homestand that included losses to two teams – the Cavs and Magic – who have been going through the motions since about the 15th of November and a third – the Bucks – who have been declared legally dead by the state of Wisconsin. Maybe the coach was right about them playing better on the road. The attendance figures for these games all seem to be about the same, right around 12,000 at Enormous Banking Conglomerate Center, most likely diehards who are now on a first-name basis with the players. Apparently, there has been a surprising amount of patience surrounding this team from the Philly fans, who must be drinking the Kool-Aid and thinking there is a plan for the future. You know, those excuses about rebuilding and about young players and that sort of thing.
Mar. 2
Now I gotta be honest here, getting beat by double digits twice in four days by the Orlando Magic is pretty much inexcusable. The Sixers lose 92-81 at the (Sc)Amway Center in Orlando, shooting 37% and turning the ball over 19 times and getting outscored 26-12 in the final quarter, which meant they actually had a lead going into the 4th period of this game, which is the first time that has happened in weeks. And the Magic shoot 7.7% from 3-pt. range in this game, mind you, so it is not like the Sixers are getting torched or anything. (Sometimes the best defense is an opponent’s inept offense.) Well, that game was awful. Let’s never play that one again. And now, for even worse duty ...
Mar. 4
Oklahoma City. Eek. You just knew this wasn’t going to end well. The Zombi Sonics stomp on the Sixers and then wipe them off the bottom of their shoes. Kevin Durant scores 42 for his future former team while Russell Westbrook records one of the fastest triple-doubles in NBA history: 13 pts., 14 assists, 10 boards in 20:17 of floor time. The 125-92 defeat is Philly’s 15th loss in a row. Their average margin during this stretch is -19.3, with six losses by more than 20 and three by more than 30.
Mar. 8
Philadelphia fans are known for booing Santa Claus, and take pride in their ability to jeer the home side. This almost certainly has something to do with being home to the Philadelphia Phillies, who have lost more games than any team in the history of sports, and they have had abundant opportunities to practice over the years. So you would think they would be booing the Sixers pretty good during a 104-92 loss to the Utah Jazz, whose fortunes the Sixers seem to be single-handedly attempting to resurrect, as the Jazz are on a 6-game death march of a road trip at the time. The Sixers get killed on the boards all night, but rally behind G Tony Wroten’s 30-point career night to tie it at 91-91, only to see the Jazz go on a 13-1 run to close out the game as the Sixers throw some bricks and kick the ball all over the gym. This is now 16 losses in a row and it’s not like they’ve been playing a schedule laden with the NBA élite during this stretch. Yeah, OKC and the Clippers and the Warriors are all pretty good, but there has been an awful lot of chum in the water here. And this is now 13 in a row they’ve dropped at home. Hopelessness is starting to settle in. And since I mentioned bad Philadelphia baseball just now, here is the perfect time to offer up a plug for A’s Bad as It Gets, a new book by Friends of The LOSE Andy Saunders and John G. Robertson, which chronicles the 36-118 Philadelphia Athletics of 1916. Somehow, those two guys have managed to sift through a whole 154-game season of a sport performed about as badly as possible and not lose their minds, whereas sifting through 16 straight Sixers losses is driving me to drugs. But I have already written over 2,800 words about this team, so like hell I am stopping now.
Mar. 10
Quick trip to New York. Lose 123-110 to the Knicks. That’s 17 losses in a row. It’s getting extremely difficult to write about these games. I’m starting to go numb just from watching them. Hitting me with a rock, at this point, would likely have no ill effects. (But please don’t throw rocks. The Sixers are already doing plenty of that on a nightly basis. Ugh.) Just imagine how the players must feel. Well, besides the fact that they’re probably miserable, they probably also feel a bit betrayed. The players are well aware that the front office is basically trotting them out to lose. Imagine what it would be like to go to your job and be told that they think you suck and they want you to fail. For guys like Turner, the season was basically an audition – show you can play worth a damn under the most trying of situations, and you and your big contract will get moved at the deadline. Big picture, of course, there might be a ‘plan’ in place here, but the big picture is composed of lots of small moments – actual basketball games – and in the moment, players want to win. It’s all that matters to them, in fact. A few years ago, the Warriors went into full-on tank mode and started five rookies, the franchise being intent upon losing every single one of their games to close out the year – so the rookies, of course, went out and won a game in spite of their own management, and were damn proud of themselves for doing so, and they were also damn pissed off that they were being thrown under the bus. For guys who wind up stuck on teams as awful as this lot in Philly is, it’s often the end of the line. The Sixers are still playing hard, at least, although I am not sure they are even capable of playing well.
Mar. 12
Really, guys? I’m trying to pump your tires and sing your praises for playing hard and having a lot of pride and all that jazz and then you lose 115-98 at home to the Sacramento Kings? What the hell was that? Oh, that’s right, the Sixers are “rebuilding,” just like the Kings have been rebuilding since about the time they left Cincinnati. There are still 12,000 people going to the games. How can they stand to watch this? Who would actually pay money to go and see this? This is six kinds of crap. The reality is that this is not a rebuilding job at all – other than Carter-Williams, Wroten, and maybe Thaddeus Young, there isn’t anyone else on this active roster, at this point, who is even remotely in the Sixers’ future plans. Forget rebuilding. This is full-on tanking.
Mar. 14
So here is a better effort on the part of the plucky Sixers, a 101-94 home loss to the Indiana Pacers, who have the best record in the NBA’s Eastern Conference. Like I said way back sometime in January, it’s often the top-tier teams that slip up a bit against these sorts of minnows, because these sorts of minnows aren’t any sort of concern as a future playoff matchup, and while that whole ‘play them one game at a time’ cliché holds true, the prime contenders are also thinking two and three moves ahead – which means they sometimes take their eye off the ball, so to speak, when facing the has-beens. The Pacers didn’t play their best game by any stretch. I would say they won despite 25 points from Young, but given that he shot 10-for-31 from the floor, they may have actually won because of it. The Pacers are currently employing Andrew Bynum as a backup center, he having been the supposed backbone of the Philadelphia squad a year ago who ultimately never played a game for the Sixers and wound up being traded to Cleveland, traded to Chicago, released and then signed off the street by the Pacers. If you are a fan of the Sixers, would you trust a front office to build a winner when they came up with a scheme as hare-brained as entrusting Andrew Bynum with the keys to the franchise? Anyway, that’s 19 losses in a row for the Sixers, who are starting to keep some dubious company here as the losing streak mounts.
Mar. 15
The franchise record for consecutive losses was 20, which was set by the Fool’s Gold Standard of bad NBA teams, the 1972-73 Sixers team that went 9-73. With an almost universality, all parties involved in such disastrous seasons come to view the debacle with humour, as such colossal failure takes on an such an air of absurdity that you can find no other way to deal with it. (That, and strong drink. This is a great article about the debut season for the New York Islanders, which closes with a party that lasts a week and involves 700 cases of beer.) That Sixers team which lost 73 games came about due to a string of horrid drafts and a terrible trade with the Lakers after management got in a spat with Wilt. But no one involved was actively trying to be terrible. There has always been rebuilding in sports, and sometimes teams flatline as the season gets going. GMs make bad moves, owners are stingy and stupid and naïve. The thing is, though, is that back in the pre-lottery, pre-salary cap eras of sports, while such failures were rife with incompetence, for the most part, everyone involved had their hearts in the right place. No one was trying to be that bad. The modern NBA model has this inherent cynicism to it. This year has been particularly galling, as so many franchising are making moves which signify that they are actively attempting to be terrible. You still wind up being terrible because you’re incompetent in the NBA, of course, and there are also times where injuries hit or ideas which seemed good at the time run aground, but the idea that you may as well just finish it off and blow the whole thing up and “clear cap space,” sometimes before the season even begins, seems to me to run counter to the whole reason that professional sports exist in the first place. The NBA vehemently denies that teams are tanking, doing so in much the manner commissioner Silver did in the quote above, which is to make a point of explaining that their apples taste good when a question comes up about why their oranges are so bitter and rindy. A number of organizations are clearly tanking, however, and the worst of the offenders are the Sixers, who host the
Mar. 17
Under the original NBA draft lottery rules, every team that didn’t make the playoffs had an equal chance to land the #1 pick. There were 7 teams in the lottery back then (it was only a 23-team league), which meant a 14.3% chance for everyone. The NBA modified this when too many teams that really weren’t all that bad started getting high picks. The draft is now weighted according to how bad you did during the season – the worst team now has a 25% chance, the 2nd worst team a 19.9% chance, etc., and so on down the line through having a 0.5% chance if you finish 14th. This is supposed to give the bad clubs more opportunity to get better through being more likely to get the higher picks. The lottery was first created when it became apparent in the early 1980s that teams like the Clippers and the Houston Rockets were, in fact, tanking to try and get the #1 pick in a particularly lucrative draft year. The lottery was supposed to eliminate this, but in fact, the opposite has occurred and the reason for it is simple: the non-zero chance to strike it rich is better than the zero chance to strike it rich. The Chicago Bulls had only a 1.7% chance of landing the top pick in 2008, while the 1993 Orlando Magic had only a 1.5% chance, and both of them hit the jackpot. Now, in all likelihood, if you have a 1.5% chance you aren’t going anywhere in the draft (which is slotted according to records after the first three picks are drawn out of the hat). Those are long odds, of course, but if you beat the odds you can make your team a whole better a whole lot faster. Furthermore, if you’re one of those teams with the 12th or 13th worst record in the league, you theoretically could’ve made a playoff push, but your chances of winning the NBA championship were, well, about 0% and everyone knows it. Non-zero is better than zero. And since the best way to increase the odds that you get a high pick is to finish with a terrible record, what incentive is there for your team to win? And keep in mind, I’m talking here about moves that the front office makes. I’m not talking about guys going out on the court and deliberately throwing games. The Sixers players aren’t throwing games here, which includes the 99-90 loss in Indianapolis to the Pacers on Saint Patrick’s Day. It’s more about how players are being put in a position to fail. Management can make one-sided trades, can opt to hold guys out who are injured longer than maybe necessary, etc., etc. There are lots of ways to finesse your roster so as to go about losing as many games as you possibly can.
Mar. 19
Victory in the lottery is no guarantee of future success, either. The San Antonio Spurs are the greatest beneficiaries of the NBA lottery of all-time, turning a pair of wretched seasons in which they were ravaged by injuries into two #1 picks, into two starting centers – David Robinson, Tim Duncan – and then into multiple NBA championships. But the Spurs always did have a clue what they were doing. In fact, since the NBA Draft Lottery was instituted in 1985, Robinson and Duncan are the only two #1 draft picks in the Lottery era who wound up winning a championship with the team that drafted them. (Shaq and LeBron were #1 picks but left via free agency to sign with franchises that had a clue.) Far too often, of course, the #1 pick in the draft turns out to be no better than a serviceable NBA player and not the great saviour that clubs were hoping for. The truth is that it is also really, really hard to construct a good team that can continue to stay competitive in one of the most competitive businesses on the planet, even when you do know what you are doing. I certainly understand that teams need to rebuild from time to time. There is an inevitable ebb and flow of talent. Most of the teams mucking around at the bottom of the NBA standings right now, however, are teams which have made a complete mess of things of their own accord. (And remember, this is the same lot that said “In Andrew Bynum We Trust” that are still making decisions in Philadelphia.) [EDIT: I should point out here that Philly does, in fact, have a new GM this year. Sam Hinkie was not responsible for the Bynum mess a year ago. Just the mess this year.] The idea that one guy is going to save them from themselves is extremely naïve. And almost all of those teams which are clamoring to be as bad as possible in a year with a pretty deep draft need far more help than simply one player can provide. And once the culture of losing sets in, it can be extremely hard to get rid of it. Setting yourself up to be as bad as the Sixers are, in fact, makes future success probably even less likely and not more, snappy slogans and wishful thinking to the contrary. In the meantime, victory is still hard to come by for the Sixers:
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| "Oh for fucksake. Why am I here again?" |
Mar. 21
Well would you look at this! The Sixers have a chance to win a game! Against the Knicks, who have been hot of late, no less. The Sixers have the ball late in the game, down 2 with a chance to win, or at least tie and get the game into OT ...
D’oh! NO!! D’ohnt do that! Sixers lose 92-91. Oh, the agony ...
23 losses and counting, tying them for the third-longest losing streak of all team with three of the more notably awful teams of recent memory, the
Mar. 22
‘XP must be a masochist.’ I know that’s what you’re thinking, and you may not be wrong in that. Seriously, chronicling this many losses verges on insufferable. It is hard on the psyche. C’mon guys! WIN A DAMN GAME! PLEASE?!?!?!? Off to Chicago the Sixers go, where they lose 91-81. 24 in a row, tying them for the second-longest losing streak of all time with the Cavs, of course. It could only be Cleveland. The 1982
Mar. 24
You knew this one was not going to go well, a 113-91 loss in San Antonio in which the Spurs romp even though they give Tony Parker and two other starters the night off. The Spurs do this sort of thing during the season, of course, and do so regardless of their opponents. Last year, they caught some shit from the league offices for daring to rest a bunch of starters for a game in Miami at the end of a long road trip, since the game was on national TV. Somewhat understandably, the league doesn’t much care for a club not putting forth its best efforts for a game like that – the irony being, of course, that the Sixers and about 10 other franchises have made no effort to put forth their best effort for the better part of this entire season. There was no reënactment of the Alamo on this night (if you remember, the home team didn’t fare so well in that contest), and now the Sixers take their 25-game losing streak and roll on to Houston for a game with the Rockets at the Summit, or whatever the arena is now called, and now that I think about it, the Rockets have some newish arena and I think the Summit has been converted into some megachurch. Clearly, the current state of Houston sports facilities is of more interest to me than watching that Sixers game in San Antonio was, since it was basically over about midway through the 2nd Quarter.
Mar. 27
Zero wins in 26 games, tying them with the Cavs from 2011-2012. Houston wins 120-98. Sigh. What is it about the number 26? The Sixers just tied the Cleveland Cavaliers record, of course, but the record for futility in MLB is also 26 games, set by the Louisville Colonels of 1889. The Colonels did all of us a favour and went out of business after the 1899 season. The record in the NFL is also 26, held by the Tangerine Dream itself, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who lost the first 26 games of their existence in 1976-77. Lest you think this is merely a North American phenomenon, consider the worst team in the history of the EPL, the 11-pt. Derby County side of 2007-2008. The Rams did what most flailing, floundering clubs do – sack the manager midseason – and new manager Paul Jewell promptly endured 26 games without a win, stretching long past the Rams being relegated and into the following season when Derby was ensconced in the second division. And to give the number 26 some love here, 26 is also the record for the longest winning streak of all time in MLB by the New York Giants of 1916. That Giants team also had a 17-game winning streak yet somehow finished 4th in the National League that year. (Take out 43 games of win streaks in that 86-win season and that would be a pretty bad team.) Speaking of 17, the longest losing streak in the NHL is only 17 games, which is somewhat understandable because you could get a tie every now and then before the league went and
Well done, Philadelphia 26ers. You have earned yourself a new nickname. You have brought the game to rarely seen levels of disrepute this season. And even having just lost 26 games in a row, Philadelphia still has a better record than the Milwaukee Bucks.
But why stop there! There are still 10 games left on the schedule, beginning with a game this Saturday against Detroit. That game with the Pistons, and the two against the Celtics, constitute winnable games in my mind. The rest? At Atlanta, Charlotte, Brooklyn, at Toronto, at Memphis, at Charlotte, at Miami ... not looking so good. If they don’t get Detroit on Saturday, they could very easily wind up losing the rest and becoming the Philadelphia 36ers.
The advanced stats paint an even grimmer picture of this team. They are among the worst in every statistic across the board on both sides of the ball. I have not even gotten into advanced statistical analysis in this post, in part because math is hard, but also because I do not need any more evidence than what I have seen with my own two eyes. In no phase nor aspect of the game does this team perform well. The Philadelphia 26ers, as currently constructed, are the worst team I have ever seen in over 35 years of watching professional sport.
Statistical models show the 26ers as being about a 3-79 team as constructed at the moment. No argument here. The over on that 16½ in Las Vegas is looking like a sucker bet in favour of the house. From Tom Ziller of SB Nation:
If the Sixers are really right now a .039 team, I mean, my God. This actually breaks Bill James’ Log5 method for estimating single-game win probabilities in some cases. It’s too low. For example, plugging in the Sixers as a .039 team gives them a -3.6 percent probability of beating the Pacers in Indiana. I mean, that actually sounds right, but ... you know, you can’t have a negative probability of winning a game. The worst you can have is a 0 percent probability of winning a game. So I went through and set any games in which the .039 Sixers had a negative win probability to zero, and ran Log5 for the rest of the season. The results: the Sixers are expected to win one more game, with a 29 percent probability of losing them all.
What is this madness? Yes, the 26ers are so bad that they actually broke mathematics! That, right there, is an achievement of which they can truly be proud.
Not only have the 26ers broken math, but they may have broken me. I can’t take this any longer. I suspect I am not alone in this. The 26ers are going to lead the league in therapy bills for years to come, because everyone involved in this mess is going to be suffering from PTSD. The Lose spent the better part of a week combing through as much game tape and reading as many write-ups and recaps of Philadelphia 26ers games as possible in order to write this. I want my week back.
