Making sense of your favorite NBA team is normally an easy task. Normally. One could explain away the Philadelphia 76ers’ catastrophic 7-17 start by pointing to injuries to star players and all the new names on the roster, using words like ‘chemistry’, ‘gelling’, and ‘ramp-up’. They’d be right, for the most part.
After a 3-16 start that included injuries to all three of their All-Stars, the team has gone on a 4-1 run over their last five games. Nick Nurse has mentioned how the fluctuating rotation has nullified some game plans and volatilized players’ roles. However, in the modern NBA, one game plan and task for players is paramount: shoot threes.
The league is taking and making more three-pointers than it ever has. It comes down to the maths. Three is more than two. If both teams take 100 shots, team A takes all of them from two-point land shooting 50%, and team B takes all from three-point land shooting just 35%, team B still wins 105-100.
This season, per Statmuse, NBA teams win at an 83% rate when shooting at or above league average from three (36%) in games where their opponent shoots below that mark. When a team makes 15 or more threes and their opponent makes 14 or less, they’ve won 75% of the time.
It’s simple: three-pointers = good, except for one NBA franchise.
The Philadelphia 76ers are the only team in the league that shoots worse from three in wins than in losses (31.5% in wins and 32.1% in losses). (The Miami Heat shoot the same 3P% in wins and losses, but every other team shoots better from deep in wins).
It is baffling. Pulling on that statistical thread unwound an ugly Christmas sweater of the NBA’s most befuddling three-point shooting stats. Before we get to the weird ones, let’s cover the basics.
Philadelphia’s 36.0 three-point attempts per game are the 20th most in the league. Their 11.5 makes are the 27th most. And that gives them a three-point shooting percentage of 32.1%, 28th in the NBA. So, they are one of the worst shooting teams.
But not when the defense is on them like baubles on a Christmas tree branch. Per NBA’s tracking data, they shoot the 10th highest percentage (31%) when a defender is within 2-4 ft.
Now, we can get weird. Philadelphia is the worst team at making open threes (defender with 4-6 ft). They take the 12th most per game (14.1), but shoot 26.4% on them. In wins, that number drops to 23.1. Let me write that again, this time in italics, so its absurdity gets through: In games where they are victorious, the Philadelphia 76ers miss more than 75% of their open threes. Toronto is the 29th-ranked team in open three-point percentage in wins, and they shoot 8.1 percentage points better than Philly does.
If we expand this to wide-open threes, when there is no defender within 6 feet of the shooter, Philadelphia shoots 36.7%, 22nd in the league. In wins, that number yet again drops, this time by only half a percentage point, to 36.1%, 27th in the league. But in games they lose, they shoot 37% on wide-open threes, the 11th-best rate in the NBA.
Philadelphia 76ers three-point shooting by closest defender.
NBA.com
Like that one uncle’s monologue at the Christmas dinner table, let’s keep getting weirder. Corner threes are the most efficient shot in basketball. It is where the three-point line is the shortest distance from the rim. Offenses are built to generate this shot, and NBA defenses have shifted to stop this shot from happening.
So of course, Philadelphia’s corner three percentage is significantly better in losses than in wins. It’s a league-worst 31.3% in wins, and in losses, it’s 37.1% the 12th-best mark. The most dumbfounding of all these stats is their right corner three percentage. It drops nearly 20% from losses (41.7% - seventh best in the league) to wins (22.7% - second to last in the league).
(One more for the record: Philly shoots 31.2% on above-the-break threes in losses and 32.3% in wins.)
Philadelphia 76ers three-point shooting by zone.
NBA.com
So, what is Nick Nurse meant to do with this information? How is he meant to continue knowing that his roster is making zero sense when it comes to the most important stat in basketball?
One potential explanation is the team grabs those victorious misses and puts them in the basket. The team averages slightly more offensive rebounds and second-chance points in wins. But that’s not enough to explain a 22-game sample size completely separate from the rest of the league — the difference only accounts for about three points a game.
As this now mangled sweater of facts has fallen over us, confusing me to the point of re-checking the stats five times as I write this, only one stat actually matters. The Sixers have won four times in their last five games. Above all lessons about causation and correlation is the fact that it doesn’t matter how you win games, it matters that you win them.
So, if this is what it takes to turn the season around, let us cheer for every missed three and shudder with every made one.