The Philadelphia 76ers are 29-13 in games where the point differential was five or less in the last five minutes of the fourth quarter. That’s how the NBA defines “clutch” scenarios for statistical purposes.

For the Sixers, that record equates to a win percentage of .690, which is #1 in the NBA.

Here, see for yourself:

In more simple terms, they’ve found a way to win 29 of their 42 close games this season.

I’ve noticed that there are several different reactions when people consider this statistic:

  1. They say, “wow, the Sixers are finding ways to win tight games this year, good for them“
  2. They say, “why are the Sixers in so many close games? are they struggling to put away lesser teams?“
  3. They say, “yeah, but how many leads did the Sixers blow to make these games close?“

All of those takes are understandable, I just see a disproportionate amount of #2 and #3, which feels negative to me. It seems like a lot of people are just looking for a reason to deconstruct this storyline and try to prove that it’s bullshit, either because they dislike Brett Brown or they’re clinging to this idea that the Sixers aren’t very good when they are, in fact, on pace to win 52+ games. Sure, they could easily flame out in the second round again, at which point we’ll talk about Brett’s job, but any notion that the Sixers are not a good team is straight-up false. They have the 5th-best winning percentage in the entire league as of March 25th, 2019.

I’ll start by saying this in general:

I don’t think it’s very smart to believe that NBA teams will build a lead and simply hold on to that lead for the rest of the game. Everybody goes on a run or hits a 2-3 minute scoring drought. Every single team does this in almost every single game.

Thiago summed it up perfectly:


I agree 100%.

You can use timeouts to alter momentum, which Brown did very well in the Milwaukee road win, but otherwise you’ve got teams like the Rockets and Warriors that can put up three straight three-pointers on three straight possessions, and now your 10-point lead is a one-point lead before you even know what hit you.

Fair point? More after the jump.

For further context, the Sixers shoot at the following percentages in “clutch” scenarios:

  • 45% from the floor (10th best)
  • 34.3% from three (12th best)
  • 76.2% from the foul line (15th)

That’s pretty good, but the free-throw number could really be improved on, especially when you consider the Sixers have the league’s #1 free-throw attempt rate in clutch time (0.667%).

They also turn the ball over on 13.9% of clutch possessions, which is 21st in the league. That’s not good, but it’s actually lower than their 25th overall standing in all combined scenarios, which comes out to 14.8%. The Sixers do, in fact, do a better job of handling the basketball in close, fourth-quarter games, though turnovers like the one Joel Embiid committed on Saturday night just kill this team down the stretch at times.

A few more clutch stats:

  • 110.8 offensive rating (9th)
  • 108.0 defensive rating (14th)
  • 2.8 net rating (12th)
  • 56.9 assist percentage (5th)
  • 51.9 effective field goal percentage (9th)
  • 59.8 true shooting percentage (4th)

The Sixers have been pretty solid offensively late in games. The defense is honestly the bigger issue for them.

To really parse this statistic, you need to go through all 42 games in which the score differential was +/- five points within the final five minutes. On 25 occasions, the final score remained within that differential. On 17 occasions it finished outside of those parameters, meaning that one team was able to pull away and put the game to rest.

Then, we go into each of those box scores and see whether the Sixers won a tight game, blew a lead, or just struggled to put away a lesser squad. We will then draw conclusions from there and present our findings at the end.

The list:

  1. October 20th: Sixers 116, Magic 115 (home)
  2. October 23rd: Pistons 133, Sixers 132 (road/overtime)
  3. October 27th: Sixers 105, Hornets 103 (home)
  4. November 9th: Sixers 133, Hornets 132 (home/overtime)
  5. November 14th: Magic 114, Sixers 109 (road)
  6. November 17th: Sixers 122, Hornets 119 (road/overtime)
  7. November 19th: Sixers 119, Suns 114 (home)
  8. November 21st: Sixers 121, Pelicans 120 (home)
  9. November 25th: Sixers 127, Nets 125 (road)
  10. December 12th: Nets 127, Sixers 124 (home)
  11. January 2nd: Sixers 132, Suns 127 (road)
  12. January 11th: Hawks 123, Sixers 121 (home)
  13. January 13th: Sixers 108, Knicks 105 (road)
  14. January 19th: Thunder 117, Sixers 115 (home)
  15. January 23rd: Sixers 122, Spurs 120 (home)
  16. February 12th: Celtics 112, Sixers 109 (home)
  17. February 21st: Sixers 106, Heat 102 (home)
  18. February 25th: Sixers 111, Pelicans 110 (road)
  19. February 28th: Sixers 108, Thunder 104 (road)
  20. March 2nd: Warriors 120, Sixers 117 (home)
  21. March 6th: Bulls 108, Sixers 107 (road)
  22. March 17th: Sixers 130, Bucks 125 (road)
  23. March 19th: Sixers 118, Hornets 114 (road)
  24. March 20th: Sixers 118, Celtics 115 (home)
  25. March 23rd: Hawks 129, Sixers 127 (road)

And these are the 17 games that qualify for the clutch statistic in which the final scored ended up being greater than a five point differential (i.e. the Sixers were able to put away the opponent, or vice versa) –

  1. October 23rd: Sixers 109, Pistons 99 (road)
  2. November 1st: Sixers 122, Clippers 113 (home)
  3. November 10th: Grizzlies 112, Sixers 106 (road/overtime)
  4. November 12th: Sixers 124, Heat 114 (road)
  5. November 16th: Sixers 113, Jazz 107 (road)
  6. December 2nd: Sixers 103, Grizzlies 95 (home)
  7. December 7th: Sixers 117, Pistons 111 (road)
  8. December 14th: Pacers 114, Sixers 101 (home)
  9. December 25th: Celtics 121, Sixers 114 (road/overtime)
  10. January 1st: Sixers 119, Clippers 113 (road)
  11. January 5th: Sixers 106, Mavericks 100 (home)
  12. January 31st: Sixers 113, Warriors 104 (road)
  13. February 2nd: Kings 115, Sixers 108 (road)
  14. February 8th: Sixers 117, Nuggets 110 (home)
  15. March 5th: Sixers 114, Magic 106 (home)
  16. March 12th: Sixers 106, Cavaliers 99 (home)
  17. March 15th: Sixers 123, Kings 114 (home)

Okay.

Deep breath.

There’s a lot to dig into here, and really you could go through every single one of these games and say, “well, player X was not available and team Z was on the second night of a back to back” and what not. You could divide the season into the Robert Covington/Dario Saric/Markelle Fultz time period, then the Jimmy Butler time period, and then the Tobias Harris/Boban period. It’s just very difficult to parse all of this in a way that’s totally accurate because there are 5,000 footnotes to make.

On a basic level, here are some takeaways:

  • 15-6 home record in clutch games
  • 14-7 road record in clutch games
  • 14 clutch wins against teams currently in playoff positions
  • 15 clutch wins against teams currently not in playoff positions (4 against Hornets)
  • 7 clutch losses to teams currently in playoff positions
  • 6 clutch losses against teams currently not in playoff positions
  • 13-4 record in games that started within a five point differential, then ended outside of that range

You see there’s not a huge difference in their win/loss totals versus good teams and bad teams. They have 14 wins against playoff teams and 15 wins against non-playoff teams.

I’d also put a lot of stock into that final takeaway. On 13 occasions this year, the Sixers found ways to win by more than five points when the game was originally tighter in the fourth quarter. And in two of those losses, they fell apart in overtime (Boston on Christmas night and the road game in Memphis). Probably the worst loss in this area was December 13th, when the Sixers were down four to Indiana, at home, at the 4:32 mark in the fourth quarter. Indy then went on a 9-0 run a few minutes later to win by 12.

If we want to break it out further into good clutch wins and “bad” clutch wins, I’d organize it like this:

  1. great clutch wins: vs Spurs, at Bucks, at Warriors
  2. good clutch wins: at Nets, at Thunder, vs Nuggets, at Pelicans, vs. Celtics, at Jazz, at Clippers
  3. clutch wins that were way too close for comfort: vs Cavaliers, vs Suns, 1st Magic home game, 1st Hornets OT game, vs. Pelicans, at Knicks, vs Mavericks, maybe vs Kings

The Sixers went on a 10-0 run to come back and beat the Spurs, so I list that as a great cluch win. The Nets road win was better than we originally thought, since Brooklyn turned out to be decent this year. The Thunder win was very good, and if even if Paul George didn’t play, the Sixers were also missing Joel Embiid. Likewise, the Nuggets didn’t have Gary Harris or Paul Millsap when they came to Philly. Joel didn’t play in the NOLA road win, while Anthony Davis was on a minutes restriction.

The clutch wins that were really iffy I listed as the recent Cavs win (super sloppy with a ton of turnovers), the home win against Phoenix (awful team), and those first two Magic and Hornets games, really early in the season. They probably should have beat New York by more at Madison Square Garden and the recent home game against the Kings was a little iffy, since Sacramento was on the 2nd night of a back to back and playing their final game of a four game east coast road trip.

The games I didn’t list are just whatever. I didn’t feel strongly about them one way or another. You could make an argument that the home Miami win and road Phoenix win were questionable, but I don’t really see it that way.

And then for losses I’d say:

  1. acceptable clutch losses:  vs Thunder, vs Celtics, vs Warriors,
  2. unacceptable clutch losses: at Bulls, vs Nets, vs Hawks, at Hawks, vs Pacers, at Grizzlies, at Celtics? (Christmas)

I didn’t know how to label the Celtics game on December 25th. You could say they were in that game the entire way and should have won, but I don’t think anybody is expecting a road win over Boston as an automatic.

The Bulls loss was horrendous, both Hawks losses were horrendous, and the aforementioned Indy loss was bad. There were seven games I listed as “unacceptable clutch losses” and 10 games I listed as good or great clutch wins. Everything else I thought was par for the course.

So yeah, a lot of this is arbitrary in how you determine what is acceptable and what isn’t, but I picked out 7.5 games where I felt like they should have won with a little more comfort, and 6.5 where I felt they just lost badly in clutch situations.

Compare that to the ten wins I identified as either “great” or “good” clutch performances, and I think that’s probably what you’re going to find for most top-eight NBA teams, which is some good, some not good, and a lot of “meh” in the middle. The Bucks lost twice to Phoenix this season, the Raptors lost by 29 in Orlando, and the Warriors lost to the Lakers and Pistons. Great teams lose badly. It just happens.

For further context, the Sixers have a 29-9 home record and six home clutch losses, so the three home losses where they were not at all competitive were Portland and two Toronto games. I’d be more concerned about the Sixers getting blasted in those three games vs. worrying about the squad “not winning by enough points” against lesser opponents.

Either way, the this is probably the ultimate macro level takeaway:

Playoff basketball is about late fourth quarter execution. For whatever we want to say about how the Sixers reached these clutch points in games, we now have 42 instances out of 73 games where the team has had to execute half-court offense and learn how to close. That’s invaluable experience for a team returning to the playoffs for a second straight season, especially considering that had virtually no postseason experience heading into last April.

Bottom line, you can split hairs over blown leads and bitch about tight games, but isn’t it kind of corny to complain about wins?