Front Paged from FanPosts [Editor's Note]: This post was done by our good friend JoshuaR. He's done some fantastic breakdowns for us (re: Barnes, Sullinger, Jones) and early draft boards over at Ridiculous Upside. He loves college basketball (assumption), which is always appreciated here.

With thanks to the SBNation Michigan State blog, The Only Colors (seen here), I wanted to take a look at the offense of the Sixers so far this season. In part 1, I came up with a scatterplot that illustrates the offensive efficiency of the individual players based on usage.

The midpoints of the graph are somewhat arbitrary. I decided to use a 105 offensive rating for the midpoint (about a point higher than the team). I then used a  20% usage rating for the midpoint, as this is commonly accepted as average for an individual.

• Players in the upper right quadrant are high usage, high efficiency players. This is what you want to see and should continue to be the focal points of the offense.
  
• Players in the upper left quadrant are players that use a lot of possession but do not have the offensive rating to justify the usage. They should lower their usage rate, as they are hurting the offensive efficiency of the team.
  
• Players in the lower right quadrant are low usage- high efficiency players. It could be useful for them to start using more possession, assuming they stay at a similar offensive rating.
  
• Players in the lower left quadrant are players that don't use a ton of possessions and have a low offensive rating. They should see limited minutes.
  

Some observations:

As expected, Turner is in the lower left quadrant. His struggles are well documented but I would continue to give him minutes. He is only a rookie and it is too early to give up on at this point in his career. It is yet another proof for how poorly he has been playing this season.

Another fairly obvious point is that Meeks deserves more possessions. I think he has played fairly well of late and has potential to continue to be a contributor to the team. He has one of the highest offensive ratings on the team, yet he is below average in terms of usage percentage.

You can see why the offensive efficiency comes in at 23rd in the NBA right now. There are few players that fall in the upper right quadrant and too many in the upper left quadrant. You can ignore Brackins since his scatter point comes in limited minutes but players like Speights, Holiday and Hawes are a cause for concern.

I think this is a pretty accurate representation of the good and bad for the offense so far this season. In part 2, I will jump into some stats that I think show why the offense is in the bottom tier of efficiency in the NBA. Anything jump out at you with this scatter plot?

Update: Part 2 Here