January Changed Everything For Philadelphia 76ers

This season, and the past few for that matter, haven’t been glamorous for the Philadelphia 76ers. But the month of January really helped them get out of a rut.

Just about anyone with any sort of NBA knowledge could probably point out before this season began that the Philadelphia 76ers would have the worst start to the season. This team had arguably the most dysfunction out of any of the 30 NBA teams, and had a fair share of injury struggles in critical spots. Those projections would go on to be true, as the Sixers finished the 2015 portion of this season with a 3-31 record, the worst in the NBA at the time.

But January, so Sixers fans hoped, would bring brighter times for the team. Those hopes would pay off, as a new point guard (Ish Smith) brought in by the new head of basketball operations Jerry Colangelo, led the way, in conjunction with some serious revamping of practices and game plans. The fundamentals changed from being a team that just fed one player to good ball movement that created shots for everyone.

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Over the first few months of the season, the Sixers scored just 92.5 points per game, giving up over 104 points per game. Their offensive rating was just 95.5, and of course, they won just three games, not impressive whatsoever.

In January, though, the Sixers scored 100.8 points per game, gave up 106 points, and put up an offensive rating of 102. They won four games, one more than the entire first 34 games of the season.

January’s schedule wasn’t an easy one, either. It started with the Los Angeles Clippers, sped up with the Atlanta Hawks and Cleveland Cavaliers, and finished off with the league’s best record, the Golden State Warriors.

The whole attitude around the NBA had towards the Sixers changed, and rightfully so. Suddenly, they were recognized as a team that could compete in any given game, and a team that could keep up with the big dogs once in a while. The Sixers even kept up with the Warriors, limiting them to their lowest point total in a single quarter all season, and just barely lost to the best team in the NBA in front of a sellout crowd by just 3 points.

The Sixers won just one of their first six games of the month, but following that really hit a groove, going 3-3 in their next six games.

Although this whole month looks good on the surface, the change isn’t all good, in the eyes of some. The Sixers have been tanking knowingly for the past couple of seasons, losing purposefully to get a better draft pick and build around that. With this year’s upcoming draft class, likely to feature Ben Simmons and Brandon Ingram, the Sixers would like to have their best possibly chances at getting the number one overall pick so that they can hold their own destiny. If they keep winning at this rate, they’re going to hurt their chances at getting that pick.

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I know, it seems funny, complaining about losing? Shouldn’t we be happy that this team has shown so much progress in just a season? Shouldn’t we be happy that so many players are finally stepping up? Personally, I would rather have the winning than the tanking, but others don’t see it that way, especially after going through many seasons of losing to get to this very point.

There’s definitely two ways to look at how the month of January has changed the team, but I’m sure we can all agree: The month of January changed a ton for the Philadelphia 76ers.