The NBA season is set to resume after suspending operations on March 11 due to the global coronavirus pandemic. The league has found their “bubble site” or “NBA campus” if you will to have 22 teams resume and finish the 2019-20 season.
With that comes new power rankings! The rankings that try and predict and figure out how a specific team is doing at the moment.
The Athletic’s Zach Harper has come up with his power rankings list ahead of the league resumption on July 30 and he was not too high on the Philadelphia 76ers as they come in ranked 9th on his list.
Harper on the Sixers:
At this point, I don’t know if I have any good reasons for being optimistic about the Philadelphia 76ers outside of just liking their top talent. They haven’t built up any credit this season, and we don’t know how they’ll look away from Wells Fargo Center. Just a reminder, the Knicks were a half game better on the road this season than Philadelphia. Their schedule is cake, though. Tough games against Indiana, Toronto and Houston, but outside of that, they have favorable matchups to use to build their confidence up.
The road woes are a legitimate concern. Philadelphia was a ridiculous 29-2 at home, but a woeful 10-24 on the road, and that is where the concerns with this team come in for the Orlando restart. How are they going to respond to playing in an empty gym? These are real issues especially when the team’es best player, Joel Embiid, is a guy who feeds off the emotion of the crowd a lot.
The games begin again on August 1 when the Sixers take on the Indiana Pacers in the bubble. [lawrence-related id=33789,33782,33770]