In the immediate wake of the Philadelphia 76ers’ blockbuster trade for James Harden, most of the focus was on how Harden would mesh with Philly’s incumbent MVP candidate, Joel Embiid. The early returns on that front have been mostly encouraging, give or take an embarrassing blowout loss to Harden’s former team, the Brooklyn Nets, and […]
Daryl Morey waited and waited … and waited some more. It took months of criticism over holding onto disgruntled All-Star Ben Simmons and sacrificing trade leverage in hopes of acquiring stars who were seemingly not available, but the president of basketball operations for the Philadelphia 76ers finally got the superstar player he wanted: James Harden. […]
As the NBA’s March 25 trade deadline approaches, the rumor mill churns ever faster around the Philadelphia 76ers and erstwhile star Ben Simmons. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe reported last month that trade talks involving Simmons were “gathering momentum,” while Sam Amick of The Athletic wrote this week that Philadelphia was still actively looking […]
Welcome to the 2021-22 NBA season, folks! And welcome back to FiveThirtyEight’s NBA forecast, which is based on our RAPTOR player ratings. Before we get into the results of this year’s model and how our forecast sees the battle to dethrone the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks playing out, let’s quickly address a few of the […]
Most NBA offseasons are defined by change. Trades and free-agent signings. Hirings and firings. Draft picks and retirements. All of these developments result in teams looking different heading into the next season than they did at the end of the year before. And there’s been plenty of change this offseason. Seven teams have new head […]