Part of the noise surrounding the Philadelphia 76ers this season regards Joel Embiid’s development, both on and off the court.
The 2019-20 season has not been awesome for many teams; the Philadelphia 76ers belong to that group. Though the team has championship aspirations, there have been reasons they haven’t won as much as Milwaukee or the Los Angeles teams.
Joel Embiid is far from a problem for this team, but he has been going through something. His scoring stats are down slightly and claims he isn’t having as much fun as last season, causing Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal to opine on TNT’s Dec. 10 broadcast that he isn’t being aggressive enough.
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Embiid handled it well on all fronts. He politely considered that they may have been right, reached out for advice on his own, sonned Boston with a performance for the ages and gracefully took a postgame interview with those two after the fact. It was the most professional way to receive such public criticism in 2019.
His scuffle with Karl-Anthony Towns was probably a turning point. Since that incident, which resulted in a two-game suspension for Embiid, he has been somewhat quiet on and off the court. He alluded to the latter in an interview with Zach Lowe of ESPN, but the former was a bit unexpected.
Embiid likely recognized that something had to change. Though he lives for the trash talk, it’s likely that he got an earful from certain people about the risks that come with it. This team is competing for a championship; any antics he gets into now could hurt their chances down the line.
This is true; the team is demonstrably better when he’s there. Good players often have that impact.
While there could be an internal conflict Embiid was alluding to, external factors are making his life difficult.
Embiid’s best complements from last season, Jimmy Butler and J.J. Redick, are elsewhere. They were replaced by Al Horford, whose strengths are similar to Embiid’s, and Josh Richardson, a watered-down version of Butler.
The dribble-handoff game between Embiid and Redick was an instant source of offense the last two seasons; the closest thing Philly has to a gunner this season is Furkan Korkmaz. And while those two have a positive net rating together (plus-5.3 in 299 minutes), only one other player has a worse net rating when paired with Embiid: none other than Horford.
Why is this the case? Quite simply, there’s less ball movement in Embiid lineups. The starting five has been great together (plus-13.7 net rating), but are merely a league-average offense so far (14th in offensive rating).
It comes as no surprise. Embiid, Horford and Ben Simmons are all best in the post, and Tobias Harris and Richardson are more scorers than straight-up shooters. Each member of this quintet is doing everything in their power to get to the rack; Richardson takes the most 3s of the group at 4.7 per game.
The big fella is facing more double-teams this season than ever before and the construct of the roster is a huge reason why. Players are moving off his post-ups more this year, but some plays see Harris, Richardson or Simmons cut towards the post, clogging the lane even more.
Embiid’s responses to these aggressive doubles have had mixed results. Sometimes he makes boneheaded decisions, other times he has nowhere to go. The abyss of these lows was their first visit to Toronto, where he failed to record a point against the sturdy Marc Gasol.
The Raptors, a smart and cohesive team with roughly the same cast as last season, knew exactly how to cover Embiid. Since then, though, he’s been different.
He’s been much more decisive from the second he touches the ball. If he sees a matchup he likes, he takes it; if not, he passes it out and tries to gain an advantage on someone else for a high-percentage shot. He’s reading the floor better than ever before, similar to his adaptation in the playoffs last season.
It’s resulted in him averaging 25.3 points, 13.1 rebounds and 3.9 assists in the nine games since Toronto.
Despite these complications or what the critics may say, Embiid is still having a good season.
His usage rate is only down 1 percentage point from the last two seasons (32.0 percent compared to 33.3 percent), his true shooting percentage is marginally less (58.1 percent compared to 58.4 percent the last two seasons) and his turnover percentage is identical to the last two seasons at 14.3 percent.
In addition, he’s drawing fouls at a much higher clip than the past two seasons, with a free throw rate of 58.1 compared to 49.5.
Oh, and then there’s the other side of the court, where Embiid still reigns supreme. Though blocks per game and per-36 minutes are down, he’s still making a similar defensive impact as years’ past, with a similar defensive box plus-minus while being on pace for more defensive win shares.
In fact, he’s made a bigger impact overall as well. In 2017-18 and 2018-19 combined, Embiid’s win shares per-48 minutes were .176; so far this season he’s up to .204. His overall box plus-minus is nearly identical to the two seasons prior as well (2.5 compared to 2.3).
Was a leap expected? In a vacuum, yes. He talked a big game about being able to focus on his body over the offseason, as he was healthy for the first summer of his professional career. But that narrative changed quickly, as both coach Brett Brown and Embiid made it clear that he would be brought along slowly.
No doubt, it is somewhat unacceptable for Embiid to enter the season not fully in shape. But do we know what “in shape” means for him? When he was playing balls to the wall every night early last season, a huge contingent of the fan base got worried. He’s seen so many injury complications in such a young career; that’s taxing in its own way.
As the Cameroonian tries to tread the line between playing hard and not hurting himself, he certainly has seemed sluggish. But the integration of new parts, their clunky basketball fit with him, and the marathon that is the NBA season are all playing parts too. Embiid has still been a great player this season, even if he hasn’t blown up like stars usually do.