Nylon Calculus: How far ahead of schedule are the Philadelphia 76ers?

The Philadelphia 76ers are, as they say, ahead of schedule. Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons and company were expected to win right around 40 games this season (their preseason over/under was 40.5); but instead they blew right on past that number, romping their way to a 52-30 record and the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference — and they did it without No. 1 overall pick Markelle Fultz for most of the year. Then they went out and slammed the Miami Heat in Game 1 of the playoffs.

The Sixers winning as many games as they did goes down as one of the most surprising developments in a season full of surprises, largely because we all know that teams this young aren’t supposed to win this much. Younger teams generally struggle to win games, as the best players in the league are the wins that tend to win, and those players generally are guys in the mid-to-late 20s. There is not exactly a perfect correlation between age and wins, but there is a strong one, and it’s led us to believe for years that younger teams will have lower win totals.

Of course, while we think of the Sixers as being incredibly young because they are powered by the youthful star duo of Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, they actually gave plenty of minutes this season to veteran players. As a result, the Sixers were only the 10th-youngest team in the league by minutes-weighted age. Still, a team whose weighted age was just 25.8 years old generally does not have as much success as this year’s Philly squad. In fact, of the 378 teams since the ABA-NBA merger that had a minutes-weighted age of 26.0 years old or younger, only 21 ever won more games than The Process Sixers.

Read More: Anthony Davis and Damian Lillard are the same size

That tidbit got me thinking: by just how much did this year’s Sixers exceed expectations, based on their age? By charting the minutes-weighted age and win totals of every NBA team since the merger against each other (1,140 team seasons in all), I was able to develop a baseline expectation of the number of games a team should  win based on the age of the players it puts on the floor. Comparing the games that team actually won to its expected number of wins gives us Wins Above Age-Derived Expectation, or WAADE.

This year’s 76ers, with a minutes-weighted age of 25.8 years old, should have been expected to win 37.01 games. Instead, they won 52, giving them a WAADE of 14.99. That performance is remarkably similar to that of the 1988 Chicago Bulls, who, with a minutes-weighted age of 25.5 years old, exceeded their expected win total by 14.10 wins. That was Michael Jordan’s fourth NBA season (and his third full season; he broke his foot and missed most of Year 2) and the first during which his team got out of the first round of the playoffs. They’d of course struggle to beat the Pistons for a couple more years before eventually winning three titles in a row — twice.

You can see just how close together those two teams are grouped in the following chart, below which we’ll dig into some other interesting historical analogs.

Houston Rockets

Age: 29.8 years

Wins: 65

WAADE: 13.07

Analog: 2013 Miami Heat; 30.3 years; 66 wins; 12.21 WAADE

This year’s Rockets were an absolute machine, and it’s fitting that one of their closest analogs is the best version of the Flying Death Machine Era Heat.

The 2012-13 campaign was LeBron James’ age-28 season and it was also the best of his Heat career. The 2017-18 campaign is James Harden’s age-28 season it is also likely the best of his Rockets career thus far. The seasons put together by each player are remarkably similar, though it should not be much of a surprise that LeBron’s best was, ya know, slightly better than Harden’s.

That said, the similarities between the 2013 Heat and 2018 Rockets do not end with their overall performance level and that of their star players (and likely MVPs). The two teams were each the second-oldest in the league at the time, for example. They also had almost the exact same expected record based on their point differential (62-20 for Miami and 61-21 for Houston), which they each outperformed by four wins. The 2013 Heat had the NBA’s second-best offense and ninth-best defense, while the 2018 Rockets sport the league’s top scoring unit and its sixth-best defense. Both teams played quite a bit slower than you might imagine based on their personnel. And both surrounded their superstars with a seemingly army of shooters and a sidekick that was one of the deadliest on- and off-ball guards in the league (Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul).

Of course, the 2013 Heat ended up slaying the San Antonio Spurs in one of the most epic NBA Finals series ever. The Rockets will have to maintain a similar level of performance if they want to make this comparison stick.

Golden State Warriors

Age: 28.8 years

Wins: 55

WAADE: 9.80

Analog: 2011 Miami Heat; 29.0 years; 58 wins; 9.06 WAADE

Interesting, this year’s Warriors have a very close analog in the 2011 version of the Heat. There are differences here: 2011 was the first year of the Big Three in Miami and this is the fourth season of the Warriors’ run (and second with Kevin Durant); the teams weren’t necessarily similar on the floor; and the way their relatively underwhelming regular seasons unfolded wasn’t all that similar, either; but performance-relative-to-expectation-wise, this is a comparison that makes sense.

Both teams entered the season as heavy championship favorites, even after several conference rivals made major moves during the prior offseason in order to compete with them, only to then win far fewer games than expected while not even finishing in first place in their conference. The Heat went to the Finals anyway … but they lost to the Mavericks in rather embarrassing fashion. Golden State isn’t favored by any of the major projection systems to make it to the Finals, but most observers still consider them the West’s most likely representative as long as they achieve full health at some point. If their season ends without adding another title to their tally, however, it will make the comparison seem even more appropriate.

Portland Trail Blazers

Age: 25.6 years

Wins: 49

WAADE: 12.73

Analog: 2014 Toronto Raptors; 25.6 years; 48 wins; 11.73 WAADE

Beyond the fact that these two teams had the exact same minutes-weighted age (25.6 years old), there are a bunch of similarities here.

Both teams had surprisingly strong defenses that helped spur them to equally surprising division titles and home-court advantage in the first round. Both got off to somewhat slow starts before surging behind spectacular play from 27-year old star point guards (Kyle Lowry, Damian Lillard): the 2014 Raptors were 11-15 after 26 games and the 2018 Blazers 13-13. Both the 2014 Raptors and 2018 Blazers got solid supporting performances from young big men in their second season with the team (Jonas Valanciunas, Jusuf Nurkic), from an older big off the bench (Amir Johnson, Ed Davis), and from backup point guards that had been bouncing around the league during the early part of their respective careers (Greivis Vasquez, Shabazz Napier).

Nobody necessarily expected the Blazers to tank this season like the early Lowry-DeMar DeRozan Raptors had planned to after trading Rudy Gay; but there was a meeting between Damian Lillard and owner Paul Allen about the direction of the franchise, which might be close enough.

Toronto Raptors

Age: 25.8 years

Wins: 59

WAE: 21.99

Analog: 2013 Oklahoma City Thunder; 26.0 years; 60 wins; 22.44 WAE

While the Raptors have been one of the East’s better teams for a while now, this year’s version of the team is actually far different from years past. The Raptors skew much younger than their teams of recent vintage, as they have given heavy minute loads to young players like Fred VanVleet, Delon Wright, OG Anunoby, Pascal Siakam, Jakob Poeltl, and even Jonas Valanciunas (incredibly, still just 25 years old) alongside their star guards and Serge Ibaka, who are all between 28 and 30 years old.

Like this year’s Raptors team, many of the key contributors for the 2013 Thunder were incredibly young; though the obvious difference is that those young players (the early-career version of Ibaka, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook) were the major drivers of the team’s success and the supporting players (Kendrick Perkins, Kevin Martin, Nick Collison, Thabo Sefolosha) were the older ones. The Raps managed to stave off a downturn this season even after losing some valuable contributors last offseason, which gives them something else in common with the 2013 Thunder, who roared their way to 60 wins even after trading James Harden shortly before the start of the season.

Cleveland Cavaliers

Age: 30.6 years

Wins: 50

WAADE: -4.91

Analog: 1991 Detroit Pistons; 30.5 years; 50 wins; -4.54 WAADE

The only team on our list with a negative WAADE, the Cavs are included mostly because it would be weird to not include LeBron’s team. The 1991 Pistons were coming off a 4-1 NBA Finals win as opposed to the 4-1 loss this year’s Cavs are looking to avenge, but like the Pistons they were a team that was old for much of the season and looked rather limp comparative to expectations for most of the year. Of course, this year’s Cavs are a bit different than that Detroit team because they completely remade their roster in the middle of the year and are now a much younger and more athletic bunch, even if they can’t defend with anywhere in the same neighborhood of the verve as the Bad Boys did. Still, it’s worth noting that even though the ’91 Pistons disappointed during the regular season, they made it relatively unscathed through the Eastern Conference playoffs until running into the MJ Bulls in the Conference Finals. The Cavs actually have the best player in the league on their side, unlike those Pistons, and things look like they might be opening up for a similar romp through the East.

Los Angeles Lakers

Age: 23.7 years

Wins: 35

WAADE: 5.81

Analog: 2016 Milwaukee Bucks; 23.5 years; 33 wins; 4.56 WAADE

The only team on this list with a losing record, the Lakers are here mostly to show how uncommon it is for a team this young to have even 35 wins.The main difference here, of course, is that Milwaukee’s 33 wins were considered a major disappointment and the Lakers’ 35 wins are far closer to a major triumph. But look at all that empty space in the graph where the 2018 Lakers and 2016 Bucks are. It’s not a common thing to approach even mediocrity when giving so many minutes to so many young players.

The oldest Buck on the 2016 team to play more than 1,000 minutes was 28-year old O.J. Mayo. For this year’s Lakers it was 29-year old Brook Lopez. The Bucks looked stocked with young talent a couple years back, as Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jabari Parker, Khris Middleton, and Greg Monroe were all 25 or younger. The Lakers have a whole lot of young talent with Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, Kyle Kuzma, Julius Randle, Josh Hart, and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. They don’t have a Giannis-style star just yet, but there are brighter days ahead.

Next: The best players in the 2018 playoffs are out West

Boston Celtics

Age: 24.7 years

Wins: 55

WAADE: 22.09

Analog: N/A

If the Lakers’ (relative) success this year was uncommon, I’m not even sure what we can call what the Celtics did in 2018. Look at that lonely green dot on the graph. There is nobody else near this team. The closest comparisons are the 2010 Thunder, who won 50 games with a minutes-weighted age of 23.3 (which is insane), and the 2012 Thunder, who won 58 games with a minutes-weighted age of 25.1.Of the 11 Celtics that played at least 750 minutes this season, eight were 25 or younger and five were 23 or younger. The amount of young talent this team has is just wild. Jayson Tatum is 19. Jaylen Brown is 21. Terry Rozier and Marcus Smart are 23. Kyrie Irving is still just 25. Even supporting players like Semi Ojeleye, Daniel Theis, and Shane Larkin are all 25 or younger. And Hayward is still waiting in the wings, along with a top-10 pick courtesy of the Lakers this year or the Kings next year. Remarkable.