'Scorecasting' makes Sixers a longshot

YOUR PHILADELPHIA 76ers have virtually no chance of winning the NBA championship this year. Precisely, it's 0.9 percent. Yo, you wouldn't take 100-to-1, betting with your brother-in-law's money.

Who says they have no chance? Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim say so. They've written a book called "Scorecasting," which uses cold, hard numbers to debunk such sports myths as the one that says there's no I in team.

Take your 10-9-8-76ers. Hug 'em, pat 'em on the back, show ya luv, and then consider the grim statistics in the book. A team with no starting All-Star on the roster has no chance of winning the NBA title.

One first-team All-Star on the roster, "Scorecasting" says, yields a 7.1 percent chance. Two first-team All-Stars and your chances improve to 25 percent. Attract three first-team All-Stars and you win the championship 39 percent of the time and make the Finals 77 percent of the time.

So how does Doug Collins, coaching a roster barren of first-team All-Stars, second-team All-Stars, almost All-Stars, feel about those grim numbers?

"You can skew statistics any way you want to," he said, defensively. At least I think he said "skew."

"All I know is, we've got the only team in the playoffs that doesn't have a guy averaging 15 points a game."

He said it proudly. He has six guys scoring in double figures, which is the kind of team he promised when he took this CPR of a job, trying to breathe life into a flatlining franchise. He also said he would make the Sixers relevant again, which he's done with a bunch of young guys who some nights outrun their mistakes.

They rallied from an awful 3-13 start, and they've seldom been blown out and seldom been outhustled, which doesn't sound like much, until you recall last year's woeful efforts. The fans love Collins' enthusiasm, his energy, the way he analyzes a game when it's over, all those numbers he sprinkles around like cookie crumbs.

But let's face it. You agree with Moskowitz and Wertheim. You think a snowball in hell has a better chance of surviving than the Sixers in the playoffs. You're looking ahead, sourly, wondering not what have you done for me lately, but what will you do for me next year?

Maybe, just maybe, the way Collins resurrected Elton Brand's career from the ashes, they ought to call him Phoenix. Maybe the way he made Andre Iguodala his go-to guy at the end of games will open some eyes in another team's front office. Maybe Rod Thorn and Eddie Stefanski can work out a trade, sending away some of the duplicate pieces the Sixers own. Maybe a free-agent shot-blocking center pulls a Cliff Lee and decides to come aboard?

Meanwhile, Michael Jordan used to call his teammates his "supporting cast." At his Hall of Fame induction, he bragged about the night he scored 20 points in a row. Assistant coach Tex Winter confronted him afterward and reminded him there was no "I" in team.

Jordan looked Winter in the I, and said, "There's an 'I' in win. So which way do you want it?"

"Michael didn't win a championship his first 6 years," said Collins, who coached Michael in Chicago. "Michael said that when Scottie [Pippen] and Horace [Grant] were very young. Once they matured and became All-Stars, he no longer said that.

"Once you say something, it's always there. He also said that defense wins championships. And it does."

Uh-uh. Not according to "Scorecasting."

"Of the 64 NBA championships from 1947 to 2010," the authors write, "the league's best defensive teams during the regular season have won 9 titles and the best offensive teams have won 7. In the playoffs, the better defensive teams win 54.4 percent of the time and the better offensive teams have won 54.8, almost dead even."

"All I know," Collins grumbles, "is that in recent years, the best defensive teams are the ones still playing [at the end]. Games change, statistics change. They say you need a running game to win in the NFL and along comes Peyton Manning."

There is no denying Collins has made this bunch better, accentuating the players' positives, minimizing their negatives. Can will overcome skill in the playoffs?

"In a one-and done," Collins said. "But very rarely in a seven-game series. The best team usually wins. That's why you see fewer upsets in the early rounds, because they've changed it to seven-game series, instead of five.

"Five-game series, you win on the road one time, that team might never get back. I think every coach would say he'd love to have as much talent as he could possibly have. Usually, you find out, on those championship teams, your best players are your best competitors.

"I've told our guys they're going to be tested more in a 2-week stretch than they were over 82 games." *

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