Scouting one-pager: Philadelphia 76ers (PHI)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,404 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
Keys
- Above-the-break three team: corners are only 23.2% of their threes (league 25.9%); their spacing lives higher on the arc.
- Rim-pressure offense: 31.8% of attempts at the rim vs league 28.4%. Wall building beats switching small.
- Joel Embiid is a genuine shot-maker: +2.0 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Dominick Barlow (1.23 xPPS on 399 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: J. Embiid - K. Oubre Jr. - T. Maxey - D. Barlow - V. Edgecombe (+11.8/100 over 322 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| PHI | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.061 | 1.091 | -0.030 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.096 | 1.097 | -0.000 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | -3.6 | -0.5 | -3.0 |
| Rim share | 31.8% | 28.4% | +3.4 pp |
| Mid-range share | 11.2% | 10.0% | +1.2 pp |
| Three share | 39.1% | 41.5% | -2.4 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 23.2% | 25.9% | -2.7 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 1.9% | 1.8% | +0.0 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| Tyrese Maxey | 1,501 | 1.071 | 1.048 | +2.3 | +1.8 | +1.8 |
| VJ Edgecombe | 1,030 | 1.020 | 1.087 | -6.7 | -5.3 | +0.8 |
| Quentin Grimes | 755 | 1.069 | 1.119 | -5.1 | -3.8 | +0.4 |
| Joel Embiid | 697 | 1.055 | 1.025 | +3.0 | +2.0 | +2.4 |
| Kelly Oubre Jr. | 544 | 1.092 | 1.112 | -2.0 | -1.5 | -1.6 |
| Paul George | 513 | 1.072 | 1.039 | +3.3 | +1.8 | +1.0 |
| Dominick Barlow | 399 | 1.130 | 1.231 | -10.0 | -6.8 | +0.0 |
| Andre Drummond | 337 | 1.039 | 1.219 | -18.1 | -10.4 | -1.1 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| P. George - J. Embiid - T. Maxey - D. Barlow - V. Edgecombe | 193 | 397 | -0.8 |
| J. Embiid - K. Oubre Jr. - T. Maxey - D. Barlow - V. Edgecombe | 153 | 322 | +11.8 |
| A. Drummond - K. Oubre Jr. - T. Maxey - D. Barlow - V. Edgecombe | 125 | 264 | -0.8 |