Did artificial intelligence help create 76ers disaster?

Not "A.I." as in Allen Iverson, the Hall of Famer, MVP and reluctant practitioner. This is artificial intelligence, a tool that team president Daryl Morey said the team enthusiastically uses in its decision-making.

"It turns out LLMs (Large Language Models) do fairly well at prediction," Morey told podcaster Pablo Torre. "They still are not beating human, like, super forecasters ... They do add signal over just scouts and things like that. So we'll treat them almost like one scout."

Morey and the 76ers signed 34-year-old Paul George to a four-year contract worth $212M in July, extended Tyrese Maxey with a maximum rookie extension (five years, $204M) and extended center Joel Embiid for three additional years and $193M. That trio only played 15 games together in 2024-25.

Embiid has been hampered by knee problems all season. Last month, the Sixers shut him down for the season. George is considering surgery that would put him out for the season. Maxey has missed 13 games.

Large Language Models are trained on massive amounts of data, but that means they're also subject to the weaknesses of their information. A recent BBC study found that popular AI assistants incorrectly answered over half of the questions posed to them about news.

Looking at Embiid on paper, you'd see a player who averaged 34.6 points and 10 rebounds while shooting 54.8 percent from the floor in his MVP season. Looking at him in last year's playoffs, you'd see a too-heavy player who put up points, but moved gingerly and often crashed to the ground in pain.

It's a hallmark of Morey teams to trust the numbers. With the Houston Rockets, he built a team around James Harden centered around offensive efficiency. Those Rockets led the league in offensive efficiency, attempted and made the most three-pointers and were second in free throws. But the approach bogged down when they missed 27 consecutive three-pointers in Game 7 of the conference finals, and had no alternative approach — the team was dead last in two-pointers.

Embiid is another player who thrives on getting to the foul line. But that approach is unreliable in the postseason, a factor in why he has never made it past the second round of the playoffs. George is another player whose efficiency numbers look great, but is sarcastically known as "Playoff P" for his history of postseason failures.

AI isn't solely to blame for the Sixers' woes, and Morey could be passing the buck. He's been in charge of the Sixers for five seasons, compiling a 22-23 playoff record with three series wins.

If things don't turn around soon, Morey's models may start to predict he won't make it until the end of his contract in 2027-28.