This Could Still Be the Best Joel Embiid Yet
If you stapled this past month onto the end of Embiid's Year Five campaign, it'd feel more like a new closer than a bonus track.
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I had some issues with Doc Rivers' management of the Raptors game Tuesday night,, but I had no problem with him going off on Keith Pompey for asking if the Sixers should be concerned about only beating the COVID-depleted Raps by five. I don't mind the fact that it's kind of an inherently insulting question; some teams (and definitely some coaches) need to be insulted on occasion. But anyone with even casual knowledge of the Sixers from the past few years knows that Toronto could be starting a backcourt of PARTYNEXTDOOR and Majid from Majid Jordan and there'd still be absolutely no taking any kind of win against them for granted -- and anyone who watched the team fold against the three-fingered Heat and Hawks earlier this month should know that the Sixers could not be considered heavy favorites against any competently run skeleton crew right now.
And mostly, it was a silly question because the Sixers' win demonstrated something that we've had good reason to suspect for a couple weeks now, and something more important than the result of this particular game against a team forever blowing in the Sixers' ear: Joel Embiid is back to his MVP-caliber level of last year. Actually, he might be even better right now.
That should be impossible. Last year was, at least pre-Garrison Matthews accidental sabotage, a dream season for Joel. He hit mid-range shots at an ungodly rate, got to the free throw line at will, closed tough games, anchored a top-tier defense and always remembered to set the team DV-R for Mare of Easttown on Sunday nights. It was what pop critics would call Joel's Imperial Phase, a period that all the greats have where everything seems to go right and even their most phoned-in moments still feel electric. For a lot of pop stars that phase only lasts for an album era, for a lot of elite hoopers it only lasts for a season -- and Jo's ended with him finishing second in MVP voting and leading the Sixers to the top seed in the East. (We hoped it would at least endure through the playoffs for Jo, and it did, until it didn't.)
When Embiid started this season at an obvious offensive level below the prior season, it felt fair enough. His shooting and overall scoring efficiency last year couldn't have been sustainable; Joel blamed-not-blamed the new ball for his shooting in the low 40s for the first month and change but it felt more like paying the piper (Hinkie?) for the absurd start to his 2020-'21 campaign. That's fine, he had his proper MVP run already, it didn't quite work out, shit happens. Joel Embiid at an 8 or 9 is still good enough to build a contending team around; if we didn't see Jo at an elongated 10 again it was disappointing but not tragic -- especially considering how much of his career we've had him at zero.
But the past couple weeks have been enough for us to ask not only if Joel might be back at 10, but if maybe last year shouldn't have been considered his 10 in the first place. His numbers are still lagging behind last season, but they're catching up more every day, thanks to a December that's seen him averaging 28.8 points and 11.5 rebounds with 50/37/85% shooting splits and nearly 11 trips to the line a game. All those numbers are close to exactly where he ended up at the end of last season, with comparable defensive stats to boot; if you stapled this past month onto the end of Embiid's Year Five campaign, it'd feel more like a new closer than a bonus track.
Except for one thing. For the 12 games of Joel Embiid's December, he has totaled 50 assists and 25 turnovers -- which even those Who Taught You Math folks out there should be able to pretty quickly understand as an exact 2:1 ratio. That's a very, very big deal for Joel, who for much of his career (including last season) has struggled to even get that ratio to 1:1; in fact, in only one season of his career (2018-'19) has he posted more total assists than turnovers -- and even then just barely, 234 to 226. But this isn't a fluke at this point, it's a trend that's lasted for basically the whole season (4.1 assists and 2.6 turnovers a game for the year, respectively a career high and career low), and is now just something that Jo is doing on a nightly basis: You have to go back to the Wolves OT loss Thanksgiving weekend, his first game back from COVID, for the last game where he posted more turnovers than assists.
And the benefits for the Sixers have been massive, as ably demonstrated by the W Tuesday night. The Raptors have made Jo's life absolutely miserable since the 2019 playoffs, neutralizing him in that series and holding him to a big ol' goose egg in one regular season 2019-'20 game. We thought it'd get easier with the departure of longtime foe Marc Gasol last year, but even with a compromised Aron Baynes and a bunch of skinny dudes they still held Imperial Jo to 32% shooting (and 13 turnovers to just eight assists) across three games last season. It wasn't so much a personnel thing as a game plan and execution thing: The Raps hard-doubled Jo in uncomfortable spots and forced him to make passes he was not comfortable making, and trusted a couple early miscues would lead to his frustration mounting and eventually him taking himself out with forced jumpers and navigation directly into traffic. By the fourth quarter, Joel wouldn't even need much defensive discouragement to be totally discombobulated.
That's been the script for nearly every Sixers-Raptors game from 2019 up until Tuesday night. Against Toronto, he was dominant and under control throughout -- helped, of course, by a decimated Raps roster and a less obvious commitment to hitting Jo with the hard stuff down low -- ending with 36 points on 16 shots, four assists and just two turnovers. And it was his composure down the stretch that bailed the Sixers out of what could've otherwise been yet another spirit-crushing loss to a good team down half their roster, as Triple-Double Tobias went on the fritz, Seth Curry and Tyrese Maxey politely declined to contribute from the perimeter and Toronto quickly wore down the Sixers' frail perimeter resistance. Jo worked the two-man game with Tobias, got to the line, finished through contact, and stayed on the move when the double came so he could evade any trapping and find Matisse under the basket for an open dunk. Only twice did he even somewhat force a shot, and one was the three he took after Seth, Tobias and Tyrese all passed up opportunities for better shots and there was no time to find something else -- forgivable, especially since it went in.
It wasn't the jaw-dropping fourth quarter performance he had closing out the Celtics a week ago, but it was arguably even more encouraging. Against a team that's consistently gotten under his skin for years, he stayed cool, didn't cough the ball up once, and made most of the biggest plays of the night for Philly: the bail-out three, the Matisse find, a putback of a haywire Tobias miss, and a brilliant clean contest of a Gary Trent Jr. drive with 20 seconds to go that all but closed the book on the Raps' attempted game thievery. The rest of the team flailed in quicksand around him and the Sixers won anyway; that's what a franchise player does, and that's the Embiid that the Sixers were missing for the first month and change of this season.
Which isn't to say the Sixers can now rely on Joel to lift them out of the abyss every time: His cold shooting against Atlanta (crystallized in the open 18-footer he bricked that would've sent the game to OT) basically cost Philly their worst loss of the season, and those New Ball games still pop up now and then for The Process, though fewer and farther between as the season progresses. But even when he doesn't have it from the field, Jo's improved passing and decision making opens up new possibilities in his game and for his team, patching up the last remaining hole in his offensive bag and making him someone the Sixers can trust to key their offense without adding to its struggles by getting stuck in a bad feedback loop. You can live with the missed open looks, it's the looks that were never even there in the first place that really grind you down.
Embiid's teammates may be too timid and/or unskilled to properly capitalize on his improved playmaking; that's a very real problem for this team that will keep their ceiling where Joel is liable to bonk his head soon if he keeps rising on his own. But I sorta see it like the Lakers early in the 2007-'08 season, where Kobe Bryant was (sort of) shedding his more remorseless gunning tendencies and (mostly) learning to trust his teammates while they still likely topped out as a second round out in the crowded West. Then L.A. dealt for Pau Gasol, and immediately shot through the roof. That trade may not be here for the Sixers -- it's only been there for a handful of teams in the 14 seasons since -- but Embiid playing his highest-level ball if and when the roster is finally there to properly support him is all we can really ask for at the moment. If nothing else, it makes the Sixers a joy to watch even when the rest of the team is actively infuriating, and lets us believe that -- in all ways -- with Joel, the best is still yet to come.