As the walls continue to crumble around the Philadelphia 76ers franchise, the focus of the season can finally and truly shift. The organization postured for as long as conceivably possible until finally having to shut Joel Embiid down for the remainder of the season earlier this week. The Sixers have lost nine of their last ten games after defeating the Golden State Warriors sans Jimmy Butler on Saturday night. They have to keep that downward trend going.
For the first time in nearly a decade, the Sixers’ most important games are not against the teams at the top of the conference. They are going to lose those games. The most important games for Philadelphia now are actually against the teams that could keep them from a bottom-six record when the regular season concludes.
The Sixers will retain the rights to their own draft pick in the 2025 NBA Draft if their pick lands within the top six picks; otherwise, it would be conveyed to the OKC Thunder. If the Sixers end the regular season with the sixth-worst record, they have a 45.8% chance of retaining the pick. If they fall down a spot to the seventh-worst record, that chance at a top-six pick drops to just 31.9% (there is almost no chance of them falling any further than the seventh-worst record.)
As it currently stands, the Sixers have sole possession of the 7th worst record, but they are only half a game up on the Brooklyn Nets, who are tied with the Sixers in the win column but have played one more game and thus have one more loss. With no games head-to-head games left against the Nets, the Sixers need to do everything they can to drop games to the teams under them. They have a real chance to climb to the 5th worst record, where their chance at a top-6 pick would climb to 63.9%; anything above that is unlikely.
The Sixers have two games left against the Wizards, two against the Raptors, and one each with the Jazz and Pelicans. To give themselves the best chance at solidifying that bottom-six record, the Sixers have to lose five of those six.
The two most critical of the six are both games against the Raptors- and it is not particularly close. The Sixers are a full three games behind Toronto for the 5th worst record in the NBA after the Raptors beat the Magic on Sunday evening. The saving grace for the Sixers is that they have already lost twice to Toronto. One more loss would give the Raptors the head-to-head advantage, which is actually to the Sixers’ benefit. The Raptors are also the only team that the Sixers could realistically leapfrog for better positioning at the current juncture. The Sixers must do what they can to lose both.
Losing both to the Raptors also drastically helps the Sixers in their battle to keep their top six protected pick. The Sixers and Nets split their season series, so division record is the next tiebreaker for them. The Sixers currently hold a one-game advantage in the divisional loss column, and losing both to the Raptors would go a long way in sustaining that gap. Couple that with the fact that the Nets and Raptors play each other twice more both in Brooklyn, the Nets could inadvertently aid the Sixers in that category as well by winning one or both of those match-ups.
The Sixers need to operate as if retaining this year’s draft pick is critical to the franchise’s future success—because it very well might be. Heading into the next era of Sixers basketball with Tyrese Maxey, Jared McCain, and a top-six lottery pick in the draft is the best-case scenario for the organization. They are at the point where they are going to lose the games they are supposed to, but it is now their duty to lose the games they have to.
