NBA Betting: Rising 76ers Offer Strong Value in Futures Market

Last season, the Philadelphia 76ers had the third-best record in the NBA with 54 wins and the third-best scoring differential at +4.3 points per game. They fought with the Milwaukee Bucks And Boston Celtics for the top of the Eastern Conference, and their regular season success led to individual awards for Joel Embiid as NBA MVP.

This offseason, their other former MVP, James Harden, made it clear he wanted to be traded. Harden received a package that did not include another All-Star caliber player in return, leading many to fear that the 76ers would not have the high-end talent to continue to contend at the same level.

Instead, more than a month into the season, the 76ers are once again competing with the Bucks and Celtics for the best record in the Eastern Conference, with a +7.8 score differential that is the third best in the NBA.

How did they manage to maintain their competitive level? And what does their level mean for the 76ers in the NBA futures market? Let’s dig.

New leadership at the top

The Harden trade wasn’t the only change the 76ers made at the top. In fact, they took it a step further, firing Doc Rivers and bringing in Nick Nurse to replace him as head coach. Nurse has different approaches on offense and defense that leverage the team’s strengths in different ways while decentralizing the 76ers’ offense. And the main change, of course, starts with the big MVP in the middle, Embiid.

Rivers liked to run the offense from the center to the outside, placing Embiid deep on the block and collapsing opposing defenses over the middle. This allowed Embiid to dominate the interior, especially in the regular season, and win the MVP award.

But the downside to this approach is that teams with strong interior defenders — like last season’s Celtics or the 2022 Heat — could collapse on Embiid, taking advantage of the times he wasn’t at full speed in the playoffs playoffs, and either force him into tough reads or force the rest of the 76ers offense to beat them. This often placed the blame for the 76ers’ success more on Harden than Embiid, with unsatisfactory team results.

Nurse, on the other hand, projects to move Embiid into decision-making positions on the perimeter to a much higher degree. Embiid still operates from the post, but he does a lot more dribble handoffs (DHO) on the perimeter, where he is able to make decisions in space rather than in the post and create easier looks for his teammates more coherently.

Embiid was the screen passer on handoffs 23 percent of the time last season, generating 1.1 points per chance, according to Second Spectrum. This season, that frequency has increased to 33% of the time for Embiid, and that creates a more efficient offense at 1.2 points per chance.

These decimal points represent significant changes in team offensive efficiency, but it’s easier to see on an individual basis. Last season, Embiid averaged 4.2 assists per game. This season, he is playing at what would be a career-high pace of 6.6 APG. In this way, Embiid uses his own dominance to create easy offense for his teammates.

Teammates including Tyrese Maxey.

Maxey transcendent

Last season, as Harden’s understudy on the perimeter, Maxey averaged 20 PPG for the first time in his career. During the offseason, there was a feeling that if Harden was moved, Maxey had the potential to further improve his game and become a true second option next to Embiid.

The results obtained to date have far exceeded all expectations.

Maxey, who just turned 23 in November, achieves the extremely rare trifecta of taking on a much larger role, dramatically increasing his volume across the board and simultaneously increasing his efficiency. He leads the NBA in minutes played at 38.1 MPG and has taken on the joint duties of first-floor general and leading backcourt scorer for the 76ers.

Maxey increased his scoring by 6.5 PPG, an increase of nearly a third from last season’s 20.3 PPG, while at the same time increasing his true shooting percentage (TS%, a metric that integrates a player’s scoring efficiency, including 3-pointers and free throws). throws) at 61.4%, just behind Stephen Curry (68.5 TS%) among guards averaging at least 12 PPG.

As a distributor, Maxey more than doubled his assists per game to rank 11th in the NBA, while reducing his turnover percentage to a career-low rate of 6.3%. His assist-to-turnover ratio sits at a scintillating 4.8. This is the sixth-best mark in the NBA among starting guards, behind pure floor generals such as Mike Conley, Chris Paul and NBA assistant leader Tyrese Haliburton.

Maxey does this by taking full advantage of opposing defenses geared toward slowing down reigning MVP Embiid. Maxey makes incredible use of his dribble, using the bounce to get into the lane and create very effective looks for himself and his teammates. These statements are backed up by the numbers.

According to Basketball-Reference, only 34.2% of Maxey’s 2-point shots are assisted (compared to 44.4% last season) and only 51.1% of his 3-pointers are assisted (compared to 68.8% last season). last season). This means he creates his own shot off the dribble much more often.

Broken down by shot distance from the rim (0-3 feet, 3-10, 10-16, 16 feet to the 3-point line and 3-pointers), Maxey takes more shots this season in just one of these categories: 3 to 10 feet. He’s making a career-high 25.9% of his shots from 3 to 10 feet from the rim…and making those at a career-best 50% clip. In other words, Maxey uses his functional dribble to get into the paint and create high-volume, high-efficiency shots himself.

He also makes relatively low-risk passes to his teammates that also create high-efficiency looks. Remember his excellent assist-to-turnover ratio this season. According to Second Spectrum, Maxey made the 10th most passes leading to a shot in the NBA (271, just behind Nikola Jokic at 273), but Maxey has a higher pass completion percentage (98.6%) and a lower turnover percentage of those passes (0.9%) than any of the nine players ahead of him on this list.

Team Effort and Future Story

With Nurse’s system providing the framework and Embiid and Maxey operating at such an efficient level, this bodes well for the entire 76ers lineup.

Embiid (58.2 FP/G, up from 56.7) and Maxey (51.5 FP/G, up from 33) are averaging more fantasy points per game this season than last. In Maxey’s case, this is dramatically true. Tobias Harris moved to the third scoring role and went from 14.7 PPG last season to 19.5 PPG.

De’Anthony Melton, the other starting guard, went from 10.1 PPG and 2.6 APG last season to 11.8 PPG and 3.8 APG. Even Kelly Oubre., who was expected to play a smaller role on a contending 76ers team than on the rebuilding Hornets last season, is averaging 16.2 points, in line with his by far highest efficiency at 61.1 TS %, compared to 53.4.

This overall team improvement is what has allowed the 76ers to remain a contender this season and gives them some interesting storylines in the futures market.

• According to ESPN BET, Embiid has the third lowest odds of winning the MVP (+650), with more juice than the favorite. Nikola Jokic (+180) despite an arguably stronger record this season than when it won in 2022-23.

• Maxey is the favorite (-100) to win Most Improved Player, and barring injury, it’s hard to see anyone grabbing him.

• Nurse has the fourth-shortest chance to win NBA Coach of the Year (+1,000), and if the 76ers finish the season the way they started it, he has a good chance of winning his second award ( 2019-20).

• The 76ers are also in play in the futures market, behind the favored Celtics but with reasonably competitive odds to win the Atlantic Division (+350), the Eastern Conference (+575) and even the NBA championship (+1400). ). It is normal that the 76ers are not favorites, but their chances will therefore be higher if the team manages to qualify.

With the changes at the top, the improved efficiency and production of Embiid and Maxey, and a team full of productive players who know their roles and play them at high levels, the 76ers indeed remain contenders even in the era post-Harden.