FanPost

Looksee at the 76ers (and Opponents) remaining ease of schedule

Much has been made of the easy 76ers strength of schedule going forward from ASG to the end of the season. Currently they are only 2 games out of the 4th spot (and home court advantage in Rd1). I think most would agree a top 3 spot would be highly unattainable but I wanted to see how our schedule compares to the other 4 teams fighting for the 3 thru 8 spot. (I'm not including Detroit, they are only 1.5 games out of a playoff spot but they are 9-17 on the road and start the stretch after the All Star Game with 11 out of 15 road games. They are toast.)

I looked at a few different factors of schedule. Home vs Away, obv. Then I broke those down in to games vs the top 8 teams in the league AND vs. the bottom 8 teams in the league. Top 8: TOR BOS CLE WAS HOU GSW SAS MIN. Bottom 8: ATL ORL BRK PHO DAL SAC MEM CHI. (The top 8 teams are a little dicey since there are really 11 teams that are % points from WAS. But that is what I used.)

The other thing I looked at is Back to Backs remaining, as well as opponents playing their 2nd game of a B2B against that team.

Here is the hard data:

Team

Record

Home

Away

H top8

H bot8

A top8

A bot8

B2B

Opp B2B

Wizards

33-24

14

11

5

3

5

2

6

3

Bucks

32-24

13

13

4

3

3

3

2

6

Pacers

33-25

10

10

2

3

5

4

1

1

76ers

30-25

13

13

2

7

2

7

6

3

Heat

30-28

15

9

3

5

1

2

3

5

H Top8 = Home Game vs top 8 team, A Bot8 = Away vs bottom 8 team, so on and so forth
B2B is that teams remaining B2B
Opp B2B is how many games that team plays against another teams on a 2nd game of a back to back.

What do I see?

Wizards have been playing exceptionally well without their All Star and have an advantage in Home games (where they are 17-10). However of the 5 teams they play the most games against the Top 8 (10), they play the least amount of games vs the Bottom 8 (5), and they are tied with the 76ers for most B2B remaining. Not listed is how much they all hate John Wall.

Bucks actually have a game tonight and then 25 after the break. Their schedule is fairly even in terms of opponent balance. They lucked out into only having 2 B2B, but get the benefit of seeing 6 teams playing on their 2nd night.

Pacers play 14 of 24 games on the road following the break. They are currently 13-14 in road games on the year. They also have 5 road games vs top 8 teams as opposed to only 2 such games at home. They luck into having to play only 1 B2B going forward.

76ers play alot of bottom feeders. I wasn't sure how it compared to the other teams but whoa! They play 14 games vs the 8 worst teams in the league. The most any other team plays is 7. The Sixers also only play 4 teams in the top 8 and 2 of those are at home. Unfortunately the 76ers have 6 back to back remaining, which really is the only downfall to this 3rd of the Schedule.

Heat play 15 of 24 remaining games at home. You'd think that was a good thing for the Heat. Oddly they are only 14-12 at home. When you consider the Sixers (18-10), Pacers (20-11), and Bucks (19-9) play so well at home I'm not sure if this is a true advantage. The Heat play more bottom feeding teams than elite teams. And they only play 3 back to backs while getting to see 5 teams on their SEGABTB (is that how you do it?).

This isn't so much a look at strength of schedule as it is Ease of Schedule. From the looks of things the Sixers have a good chance to get that 4th seed. The team that appears to have the inside track to the 1st round Home Court unfortunately looks to be the Bucks. I hope I'm wrong

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