76ers' retooled superteam races to NBA-best 8-1 start

The Philadelphia 76ers have the best record in the NBA, and the way they have gotten there says as much about their nerve as their talent. Philadelphia improved to 8-1 on Wednesday night with a 112-106 win over the Detroit Pistons, a result that also avenged the only loss of the team's season, according to a detailed breakdown published by NBA.com on Thursday. The Sixers sit first in the Eastern Conference, ahead of teams built, like theirs, around superstar additions made over the summer.

What distinguishes Philadelphia's start is not dominance but repetition under pressure. Seven of the team's eight wins have been decided by five points or fewer in the final five minutes of play, NBA.com's analysis found, and the Sixers have rallied from double-digit deficits four separate times this season, a league high. Their lone defeat, a 93-106 loss to Detroit on Oct. 25, was not close in the closing minutes. Beyond the record, the team's official schedule page shows the next test arrives Friday, when Philadelphia faces the Cleveland Cavaliers in group play of the Emirates NBA Cup.

A roster remade in a single offseason

The current run is the product of a roster overhaul that began in July, when Philadelphia sent forward Paul George and a package of draft picks to the Boston Celtics for Jaylen Brown, the 2024 NBA Finals most valuable player. The trade reshaped two rosters at once, sending Brown to a 76ers team that already featured center Joel Embiid and guard Tyrese Maxey, while Boston turned to George to replace him in its lineup.

The Brown trade set up a second, larger move. Free agent LeBron James signed with Philadelphia shortly afterward, pairing him with Brown, Embiid and Maxey to form one of the more talent-dense rosters in the league. Team president Mike Gansey has credited the Brown trade as the move that made the James signing possible, according to a Bleacher Report account of his comments. The moves came after Philadelphia parted ways in May with Daryl Morey, the architect of the team's previous rosters, while retaining head coach Nick Nurse for what is now his fourth season in charge, a decision confirmed at the time in an NBA.com report on the front-office change.

Early in the season, both of Philadelphia's new stars missed time by design. Embiid and James sat out an Oct. 31 win over the Charlotte Hornets as the second half of a back-to-back, with the team instead relying on its depth, according to reporting in the Philadelphia Inquirer. VJ Edgecombe hit a go-ahead three-pointer with under 40 seconds left in that game, and forward Dean Wade recorded a career-high 10 assists.

What the numbers show

Philadelphia's underlying statistics paint a more modest picture than the record alone. The team's point differential of plus-5.8 per game ranks ninth in the league, a figure NBA.com's analysis suggests is closer to that of a 6-3 team than an 8-1 one. If that differential holds over a full season, Philadelphia would project to roughly 60 wins, which would be its best mark by that measure since the 1982-83 season.

The defense has carried the team more than the offense has. Philadelphia ranks second in the league in defensive rating, allowing 105.1 points per 100 possessions, while its offensive rating of 110.5 ranks 20th. Opponents are shooting just 31.8 percent from three-point range and 26.0 percent on mid-range attempts against the Sixers, contributing to a league-low effective field-goal percentage allowed from the perimeter. Philadelphia also ranks third in turnover differential, forcing 3.4 more turnovers than it commits per game, an improvement attributed in part to better ball security from the team's new additions.

Embiid's individual shooting numbers have been rougher. He is making a career-low 42 percent of his shots in the paint and is 3 for 26 from three-point range this season, a mark of 11.5 percent that ranks worst among 195 players with at least 20 attempts, per the NBA.com figures. Even so, the team's defense has been markedly better with him on the floor: Philadelphia has allowed 97.8 points per 100 possessions in Embiid's 234 minutes, compared with 112.2 in the 198 minutes he has sat, a gap the site's analysis says fits a pattern that has followed him for much of his career.

Voices from the locker room

Players have pointed to chemistry, not polish, as the explanation for the team's success in close games. Maxey, who is averaging 28.0 points, 5.4 assists and 3.8 rebounds a game, described the toll of a condensed schedule after the Hornets win: "Back-to-backs are hard, man," he said, according to the Inquirer's report.

"We just locked in and truly trusted each other," Dean Wade said of the team's defensive stops in the final minutes against Charlotte, as quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Nov. 1.

Edgecombe, explaining why he took the late shot against the Hornets, said simply that his teammates backed him in the moment: "They trust me in the clutch." Nurse has similarly pointed to continuity dating back to training camp as a factor in the team's poise, telling reporters the group has been connected since the preseason.

What's next

Philadelphia's test now shifts to whether its underlying numbers catch up to its record, or whether its record settles toward its numbers. The schedule so far has worked in the Sixers' favor: of their opponents, only Cleveland ranks among the league's top 10 offenses, while four of the nine teams Philadelphia has faced rank in the bottom 10 offensively, according to NBA.com's tracking data, meaning tougher competition lies ahead.

That competition begins immediately. Philadelphia visits Cleveland on Friday night in group play of the Emirates NBA Cup, a tournament whose group-stage games count toward the regular-season standings. The Sixers and Cavaliers share East Group B with the New York Knicks, Miami Heat and Indiana Pacers, with the winner of each of the NBA's six groups and a wild-card team from each conference advancing toward a championship game set for Dec. 11 in Indianapolis. A win Friday would give Philadelphia its sixth straight victory and keep it unbeaten in group play.

Beyond the tournament, the 76ers' start has reordered expectations in the Eastern Conference, where Boston and the other contenders built their offseasons around replacing, rather than adding, a star. Whether Philadelphia's new quartet of Embiid, Maxey, Brown and James can sustain its level of play, and stay healthy, through an 82-game season remains the question hanging over a start that has, for now, been as tense as it has been successful.