The Philadelphia 76ers are 8-1 and the league is buzzing about a potential superteam, with ESPN's Windhorst and MacMahon digging for intel on just how real it is. AccuScore's simulation has an answer in numbers: the hot start is real, but it's not a sure thing yet.
Running 50,000 simulations of the rest of the season, AccuScore projects the 76ers to finish 46.6-35.4, good for a 75% probability of making the playoffs. That's a strong number, but it leaves one in four simulated seasons where Philadelphia misses the postseason entirely — a reminder that an 8-1 start, while loud, is still a small sample for a full-season model.
The betting market is coming around to the same conclusion, just more slowly. AccuScore's Market Index, which rates teams purely off betting prices, has Philadelphia at 9th of 30 with a rating of +6.25%, up one spot from 10th the previous week. The market is noticing, but it's not treating the 76ers like the clear top tier of the league.
The next test comes tonight. Philadelphia visits the Cleveland Cavaliers on November 6, and AccuScore's simulation gives the 76ers a 54.3% win probability in that game — close to a coin flip, not the kind of lopsided number you'd expect from a team people are already calling a superteam.
So what does the data actually say about the hype? The 76ers have been good enough to post a 75% playoff probability and crack the top 10 of the Market Index, which is real progress for a team picked outside the league's upper tier. But the model isn't ready to call this a juggernaut — not with a near-even game on deck in Cleveland and a quarter of simulated seasons still ending short of the playoffs. The next few weeks, not the first nine games, will decide how much of the 8-1 start is signal.