What if I told you that the Sixers had the best field goal percentage in the NBA?
Pigs flying? Hell frozen over? Dave Spadaro speaking without a filter? You would probably point to any number of circumstances that seem totally weird, like we’re living in Seinfeld’s bizarro world.
But this is the truth. Nobody is shooting the ball better than Doc Rivers’ team, which is currently 5-2 with a 49.2 field goal percentage.
Here’s the current top five as of November 2nd, 2021:
Raw numbers are useless without context, and one might assume that the Sixers are #1 because they shoot fewer threes than most other teams. That would have been true last year, when their three-point volume was bottom-five in the league, and they took a ton of two-pointers while scoring frequently at the foul line and around the rim.
But that’s actually not the case this year. The Sixers are the fourth-best three point shooting team, at 38.1%, and they’re middle of the pack in three-point volume. They’re shooting 34.9 threes per game this year, compared to the 30.1 they averaged last year, which moves them up from 26th to 18th in the league, and results in an early-season shot plot looking like this:
To extrapolate a little further, here are some other current numbers and rankings:
There’s a lot of good in there. They are much less reliant on getting to the foul line and getting out in transition after forcing turnovers. There’s more natural creation in the half court. They’ll still post Embiid frequently, but those pick and rolls are effective. Same with Seth Curry running that Allen Iverson cut and then flowing into the next action from there.
Yeah, it’s early, but the Sixers are “scoring the ball” nicely. Showing balance. Sharing the rock and playing effective basketball in Ben Simmons’ absence.