NBA Playoffs: 10 best players this postseason after Round 1

NBA Playoffs: 10 best players – 9. Joel Embiid, C, Philadelphia 76ers

Joel Embiid put together the best season of his career this past year, a legitimate MVP candidate who led his team to the top seed in the Eastern Conference. Unfortunately, the primary reason he doesn’t have a chance to win the MVP this year is the same reason he is not higher on this list: injury.

Embiid was his usual, spectacularly impactful self through 3.5 games of the Philadelphia 76ers’ first-round series. He dropped 30, 22 and 36 points respectively in the first three games, and if he didn’t dominate in other ways he didn’t need to as his team rolled.

Then he went down with a knee injury, revealed via MRI to be a small tear to his meniscus. He missed over half of Game 4 and then all of the closeout Game 5 against the Washington Wizards. While his team was able to advance without him, Embiid wasn’t able to be on the court to help them. Thankfully he was able to play in Game 1 of the second round.

Embiid’s impact always goes deeper than simply his stats, as the 76ers have historically been elite when he plays and abysmal when he sits in the postseason for his career. This year has been similar, as Embiid was +20 in a seven-point Game 1 win, and +29 in a 29 point win in Game 3. He was +2 in Game 4 before he went down, a game his team would lose by eight.

Box Plus-Minus (BPM) measures a player’s box score impact per 100 possessions, and Embiid’s 12.5 number fell third behind James Harden and Kawhi Leonard for the first round. Whether Embiid can lead his team deep into the playoffs is largely a question of health for Embiid, as when he has played he and his team have dominated.