OKC Thunder: Dissecting 16 playoff seeds and 4 WC team records

Philadelphia 76ers:

• 65 games played (39-26)
• Record versus seeded teams: 37 occasions (16-21)
• Record versus lottery teams: 28 occasions (23-5)
• Home record (29-2)
• Road record: (10-24)
• Back to back sets: 10  played (14-6)
  • two sets with both teams seeded (1-3)
  • six with one seed/one lottery seed (10-2)
  • two with both teams in the lottery (3-1)

The 76ers should be pushing Adam Silver for all teams to play the same number of back-to-back sets. Philly has 11 such sets already completed while the Pacers who are just ahead of them have only played eight (and as noted – not successfully).

As noted in the Nuggets section it will be highly intriguing to see what type of shape Joel Embiid is in when the NBA returns. He’s never been a player who stayed in condition in the offseason so will this situation be different? On the other hand, the back injury Ben Simmons sustained kept him out of nine of Philly’s last 10 games so this hiatus came at the perfect time for him.

Depending on how serious Simmon’s injury is could determine the 76ers success in the postseason but the other very real concern has to be how the team performs away from home. Having only won 10 games on the road Brett Brown will need to find the answer to fixing that problem or this team could find itself ousted early.

Philly sits in sixth in the East and if the league were to go directly to the playoffs would meet the Celtics in either a Conference or league seeded format. Therefore, they should be among the clubs actively pushing for games that count toward the season record in order to try to move up past the Pacers who were slated to play the Heat or Nuggets depending on the seeding format.