Get Him the Goddamn MVP
Get Him the Goddamn MVP
Joel Embiid is now 2001 Barry Bonds. Joel Embiid is now 2021 Olivia Rodrigo. Joel Embiid is now your Most Valuable Player front-runner.
Andrew Unterberger is a famous writer who invented the nickname 'Sauce Castillo' and is now writing for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey As Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.
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I can't believe we're here, really. In the season's first month or so, it seemed like it was just gonna be a sorta down year for Joel after his near-MVP campaign the year before -- the more difficult follow-up album after the Grammy-winning blockbuster, still as rewarding in its own ways but less superficially awesome. Then for the next month or so, it was, "OK, his stats still aren't going to look as good as they did last year, but Sixers fans watching know this might be the best he's ever played." In 2022, though, there's no need or room for any such qualifiers. Joel Embiid is now 2001 Barry Bonds. Joel Embiid is now 2021 Olivia Rodrigo. Joel Embiid is now your Most Valuable Player front-runner.
Embiid's last two performances, against the Spurs and Pelicans, have been perhaps his most unbelievable yet, simply because of how friggin' mundane they were. Over two games, he posted a combined 80 points, 26 rebounds, 10 assists (with just four turnovers), 5 blocks and 26 free throw attempts -- across two closer-than-they-should-have-been wins that both required major lifts down the stretch -- and I can't remember a single highlight play from either. Joel has dazzled plenty this season: sprawling coast-to-coast finishes, Eurosteps for tough layups around stationary defenders, long stepback fadeaways hoisted over a sea of hands. But now he's dominating with a steady diet of The Usual: free-throw-line jumpers that catch his defender just slightly off-balance, short hooks over helpless bigs in the paint, putbacks and muscle-throughs and an entire Macy's Day Parade to the charity stripe. As Prop Joe would advise, Embiid is killing 'em with boredom.
And this is what boredom looks like right now for Joel Embiid: Over his last 15 games, he is averaging 34.5 points, 10.6 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 3.3 turnovers a game. He is shooting 56% from the field, 39% from three, and 83% from the line -- which he is visiting nearly 12 times a game. The Sixers are 9-3 in that stretch, despite significant time missed by essentially every other rotation player except Tobias Harris and Georges Niang, including statement wins in Brooklyn and Miami. If Doc hadn't taken him out down the stretch against Houston in what was already a blowout -- tough, but defensible -- he'd most likely be working on 15 straight 30-plus-point games right now, something only Kobe Bryant and James Harden have done since the ABA/NBA merger.
The time is now. Dealing Simmons, jettisoning Tobias (good again now btw), courting James Harden, competing in the playoffs -- these are all secondary concerns for the Sixers for the rest of the season. There is now but one priority, and it is getting Joel Hans Embiid the fucking Most Valuable Player trophy.
The Sixers are not going to win the title this season -- as fun as a good old-fashioned #SixersJanuary this may be, that much we know with pretty close to absolute certainty. The team is too deficient in too many areas, and even if there is a deal out there that Daryl Morey can stand to get Simmons and/or Harris out of here for better-fitting players (preferably ones who actually play), it's tough to imagine the return being enough to sufficiently address all of them. You can say that it's unconscionable at this point to waste a season of Joel Embiid's prime not competing for a title, and I'd agree: The Sixers have to do everything they can to make sure Embiid wins the MVP, so this contention-less season will not be a waste.
And you know he wants it -- oh, how he wants it. You can feel it with every time he starts shooting threes to get to those round-number plateaus with his scoring, because he knows that 40 looks a lot more than three points better than 37 in a headline. You can see it in his refusal to take rest games that in previous seasons would likely have been scheduled for him weeks in advance -- playing in 19 consecutive injury-free games for just the second time in his career. (The best ability may not actually be availability, but the worst ability is almost certainly unavailability, particularly as far as the MVP is concerned.) And really, you can hear it each time he preaches patience with Daryl Morey's long-game approach with the Simmons trade and with getting the Sixers back to title contention in general -- which, on some level, perhaps only a subconscious one, has to be because he understands how much stronger his MVP case is if he's essentially doing this all as a one-man show.
What can the Sixers actually do to help? Well, they can certainly try playing better -- not dropping games they shouldn't so that the Sixers can keep rising up the standings, not missing shots they should make to pad Embiid's assist totals, not blowing leads so that Embiid has to risk his body by dragging them over the finish line when he's already checked out with his 30 in the third quarter. But more practically, they can just get him the goddamn ball as much as possible -- which (largely out of necessity) they've certainly done an impressive job of recently, finding him a career-high-tying 32 shots against the Spurs. And they can just hype him up, give some catchy soundbytes for the post-game, anything to help with the narrative of Embiid being the guy for the season.
And narrative is going to be the final battleground for this MVP race. Because I believe strongly that by season's end, Embiid's primary challenger for MVP is not going to be Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo or even Stephen Curry -- it's gonna be LeBron James. You could sense the Wind of Narrative picking up already on Tuesday night with LeBron's 33 points and easy win in Brooklyn, and you can bet it's only gonna get faster and faster from here, as Anthony Davis returns and the Lakers pick up from a .500 team to something closer to home-court advantage, the level they should have been at all along. If LeBron, at 37, posts a LeBron-like season stat line, gets the Lakers to a respectable-enough playoff seed, and starts to really dig into his now-trademark "Give me my damn respect" softshoeing, you know the ESPN-led media -- balls still blue for not having gotten to vote for him last year, after his team fell apart and he got hurt -- isn't going to give a damn about how much better Embiid's numbers are. They'll vote for LeBron without hesitation, and like last year, they'll tell you it's preposterous you even considered anyone else.
Indeed, if reading this so far is giving you deja vu, it's probably because we were having close to the exact same discussion around this time in 2021, before Embiid threw down on Garrison Matthews in Washington and then went down himself, missing three weeks of the season and effectively ending his MVP campaign. More than anything else with the Sixers, I fear this happening again this season. I fear making it a reality by talking about it. I fear making it a reality just by thinking about it too loudly. If some farkakte injury ends up robbing Joel of his MVP chances a second straight season when he's playing this well, when he feels it this close, I don't know how he'd ever get over it. I don't know how I would either.
Because really, this might be his last chance. He might never play this well (or stay this healthy) again, of course, but that's not even really what I mean -- I mean, if we do get rid of Simmons, particularly if we do get Harden or Harden-like support for him, that might already dip into his chances, since the narrative won't be as friendly and a second star's arrival on a team almost always mean the first star is then removed from MVP discussion. Everything is breaking right for him this season, and he has the production to really merit it. I don't know if he's technically been better than Jokic this season -- with him phoning in his defense some nights, his advantage on that side of the ball is not what it once was, and I'm not gonna embrace the unflattering Sixers Twitter move of acting like talking about the many statistical advantages Jokic has over Embiid just makes you a nerd who Doesn't Know Real Hoop or whatever. But I know that MVP isn't going to a guy who already won last year and is barely keeping his team above .500 this year, so I'm not particularly worried there. LeBron is the real threat.
And wouldn't you know it? He's coming to town later this week. I don't know what kind of luck the Sixers are going to have against him, especially with Anthony Davis now also in tow, seeing as how our defense can barely handle Herb Jones and Nickeil Alexander-Walker right now. But we gotta show up, at least. Kate Scott was getting on Sixers fans on the broadcast tonight for sounding halfhearted with their "M! V! P!" chants for Embiid against New Orleans, and she was right to do so -- yes the game was annoying, yes our guys mostly sucked, but there are no blah Sixers games right now with JoJo playing like this, there is only history unfolding before us. And if we want other folks to hop on the Joel-for-MVP bandwagon, we gotta say it first and we gotta say it loudest. He deserves it. We deserve it. And in a season with no playoff expectations, letting the MVP slip out of Joel's hands would be the only way the season could still be a failure.