Team Ricky Prediction Scorecard (But Mostly Adam's)

Saving you a trip to the Wayback Machine.

[photo: Mitchell Leff/Getty Images]

Adam Aaronson, whose legal name is Sixers Adam (@SixersAdam on Twitter), covers the Sixers for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez. He has been legally banned from covering the team in person, but that ban will be lifted in March of 2020. He is brought to you by the Official Realtor of The Process, Adam Ksebe.

---

There is nothing quite like the week leading up to the beginning of a sports season. There are nerves. There is excitement and anticipation. There are rumors and speculation. There are high hopes. And then there are… predictions. Everybody’s predictions.

Predictions are a funny thing, because we all make them before a season starts-- but rarely does anyone actually go back at the end of the season and reflect on how accurate their calls were. With this season’s future uncertain and nothing going on, I decided now would be a good time to take a stroll back to October 2019 and look back at all of the predictions from Team Ricky -- mine, AU’s, and Spike and Mike’s. Since I am simply much more brave than my coworkers and put out more predictions, you may see more of me on here than anyone else. For the sake of organization, I will group together similar picks.

Adam: The Sixers push for 60 wins, but fall in the high-50s.

Spike: The Sixers will win 55 games.

Mike: The Sixers will win 57 games.

Well… none of us exactly nailed this one. The Sixers were 39-26 in 65 games, good for a 49.2 win pace. Upon listening to the preseason pod again, Spike and Mike did not seem particularly worried about how much time it would take for this unit to gel. I predicted part of it as you will see soon, but did not have a grasp of how extreme the initial troubles would be and how long they would last.

Adam: The Sixers carefully manage Joel Embiid’s regular season workload, and for the first time he enters the playoffs at full strength.

Adam: Joel Embiid does not contend for MVP because of games played.

AU: Joel Embiid plays at an MVP-caliber level… but doesn’t play nearly enough games to get serious consideration for the award.

Embiid played 44 of 65 games, and his minutes per game dropped from 33.7 last year to a much more healthy 30.2. In terms of load management and availability, AU and I both were on the money here -- but with Embiid’s level of play, we were not. Don’t get me wrong, Embiid was great, but he had absolutely no standing in the MVP race. While obviously not any kind of indictment on him as a franchise centerpiece, it’s okay to admit that this was at least a bit disappointing. Hopefully when (...if?) the Sixers can put a team around him that actually makes some amount of sense, we see him make that leap.

Adam: The Sixers have a noticeably slow start to the season on offense.

Adam: The Sixers have the best defense in the league, and nobody comes close.

Adam: Four Sixers will be strongly considered for All-Defense Teams

I was not shocked or concerned when it became clear early in the year that this team was going to need time to score points. But then the concern eventually grew, for two reasons: (1) it was taking them way too long, to the point that it started to feel like they just could not score, and (2) their defense, which was supposed to be the team’s calling card, was not nearly good enough to overcome offensive buffers against good teams.

Adam: Josh Richardson wins the backup point guard job.

AU: Nobody wins the Raul Neto vs. Trey Burke battle.

I was definitely way off the mark here, as Richardson quickly proved incapable of being a primary ball-handler (though to my credit, I did say that my money was on Neto if it truly came down to him and Burke). While Burke had a solid run soon before being released and Neto had a few good stretches of play, neither one had a firm grasp on the job that ultimately was taken by Shake Milton. AU is the winner here.

Adam: The Sixers trade Jonah Bolden, Trey Burke and a second-round pick to the New York Knicks for Reggie Bullock.

Being the Trade Machine nerd that I am, I wanted to take a shot at nailing a specific deal. I still think Bullock would help a lot here! But just wait for this run of picks I pulled off…

Adam: Furkan Korkmaz is a legitimate bench contributor.

Adam: James Ennis III’s role nearly or entirely dissipates by the end of the season.

Adam: Jonah Bolden is on a new team at the end of the season.

BANG. BANG. BANG. What a run! After some strong skepticism of Korkmaz’s chances of being valuable when the Sixers brought him back, I was impressed with what I saw in the preseason, enough to buy some stock. I got a nice return on investment, with Korkmaz becoming one of the team’s best offensive players and making many improvements on the margins.

I liked Ennis III, but always felt like we were putting too much stock in one good playoff series. After all, it took him two months to make clear that he was a better option than Jon Simmons. My skepticism on Ennis seemed to prove justified. 

AU: Tobias Harris replaces Ben Simmons as the team scapegoat.

Spike: Tobias Harris’ all-around performance will be disappointing.

Adam: If the team has a third All-Star, it will be Al Horford.

AU and I have both written a bunch about Harris’ disappointing year (and his disappointing Sixers tenure, at that), but I think these three picks highlight something about Al Horford more than Harris. Harris received a five-year, $180 million contract and did not even have a legitimate case to be an Eastern Conference All-Star. Spike’s prediction was right, and in any normal universe, AU’s would have been as well. But instead, nobody seems to have an issue with Harris, because Horford’s play was even more frustrating. None of us seemed to even consider a potential drop-off from Horford, especially me -- I thought Horford was going to be the third best player on the team!

Adam: Matisse Thybulle makes an All-Rookie team.

Mike: Matisse Thybulle is the team’s best bench player.

I was slightly less ambitious than Mike here, and it seems to have done me some good. Thybulle is likely on the borderline of making the second team, and it may simply depend on how much the voters care about his defensive numbers or his presence on a good team versus day-to-day output. But at the start of the season, man did it look like we would both be dead-on. Thybulle immediately made an impact defensively, and as teams began strategizing to limit his influence on the game, he had an absurd shooting stretch that was flipping games from losses to wins. After his injury, he failed to regain much footing, with his three-point shot regressing and teams continuing to adjust to his aggressiveness. 

AU: The Sixers trade Zhaire for a shooter at the deadline.

This one did not happen, but we will give AU partial credit, because the Sixers were trying to do something along these lines. The issue was, of course, a lack of interest in the Mike Scott + Zhaire Smith + second-round pick(s) package they were eager to use to upgrade.

Adam: The Sixers cruise to the Eastern Conference Finals with little challenge.

Where all of us got it wrong this preseason: the East being a two-horse race between the Sixers and Bucks. The Bucks were far and away the best team in the conference, and the Sixers currently stand as… the sixth seed. Philly could still prove to be the second-best team in the conference (though I’m incredibly skeptical), but all of us who thought they were a shoe-in for the NBA’s final four were wrong.

And now, finally…

Adam: The Sixers lose to the Bucks in the Eastern Conference Finals.

AU: The Sixers lose to the Clippers and Kawhi again in the Finals.

Spike: The Sixers lose in the NBA Finals to the Clippers.

Mike: The Sixers win the NBA Finals over the Nuggets.

Even an eternal optimist would probably rule out AU, Spike and Mike by now -- this team beating the Bucks is basically inconceivable barring some sort of injury to Giannis Antetokounmpo. And I, an eternal pessimist, find it possible but unlikely that my pick turns out to be correct. This team has a historically large discrepancy between their performance at home and on the road, and would have to win four of seven games without home-court advantage against both the Celtics and Raptors? It’s not impossible, but I certainly wouldn’t bet on it. At this point, I’m just hoping we can get an answer eventually.