Sixers succeeding in close games

In Marc Stein’s most recent newsletter for the New York Times, he brought up the interesting statistic that Philadelphia is 6-1 in one-possession games this season. Intuitively, I knew the Sixers were winning a lot of close games. A team can’t hold third place in the conference with a 0.0 net rating otherwise. But I hadn’t quite realized the extreme degree of the team’s success in close games.

NBA.com’s clutch stats further backs up the notion. The Sixers have tied for the most games that enter the clutch (games within 5 points in the last 5 minutes) with 14 such contests. So they’re playing a ton of close games, and winning a lot of them, going 11-3 in those games for a league-best .786…