Saturday, December 6, 2008

20 games in

Well, we're twenty games into the season. A 9-11 record with a -0.3 point differential. Not exactly what we were all hoping for after the big off-season signing of Elton Brand. And not really in-line with the WP48 projection of the season I put together.

The big question is obviously "why?".

Taking a first crack at the question, I looked at the minutes per game for each player on the roster to see if that was the problem. Short answer: no. Based on current minute allocations and last year's WP48 for each player, the Sixers would be on pace to win somewhere between 43 and 53 wins (depending on which WP48 projection I use for Elton Brand).* Samuel Dalembert's playing less minutes, but other than that Mo Cheeks is generally playing everyone the expected minutes.

As for Dalembert playing less minutes, I guess that leads into the other possible explanation for the poorer than expected performance. You know, that the players just aren't playing as well as they have in the past. From what I've been able to tell (and what the news media has been reporting ), Dalembert and Andre Igoudala have both been playing worse than last year. I didn't do an in-depth look at their performance to see how much perception and reality matched up or check to see if anyone else's performance was way off, but a downturn in both of their performances could certainly explain the Sixers' performance so far.

Hopefully Professor Berri will take a look at the Sixers sometime in the near future and give us some answers!


*I did a rough estimate that did not take into account the extra minutes played so far this season in overtime.