Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers leave Charlotte in one piece

Anytime Joel Embiid hits the deck during a Philadelphia 76ers game, it’s worrisome.
From hurting his back, to hurting his foot, to hurting his knee, to having one of his old teammates – Markelle Fultz – literally break his face a little over a month before the playoffs opened up, Embiid has missed hundreds of games, plural, up to this point in his career, and has retained the injury-prone moniker as a result.
But when Embiid spends seemingly the entire 33 minutes he’s on the Queen City court getting hammered by all eight of the Charlotte Hornets’ players, it’s hard not to grimace at every hard foul, body check, and Kelly Oubre forearm to the face.
Still, a win’s a win, and when the Philadelphia 76ers secure their third-straight W in a row, with a home contest versus the Utah Jazz on deck, it’s easy to overlook some of the flaws in an ultimately winning effort.
The Philadelphia 76ers need to adjust to Joel Embiid’s new plight in the paint.
If the last three games are of any indication, Joel Embiid has to get used to the reality of his situation: He’s going to be double-teamed on basically every post touch.
Now granted, this isn’t anything new for “The Process,” as Embiid routinely has to navigate past multiple bodies on his way to the hoop in the restricted area, but up until recently, that help would come late, once he’d actually received the ball. Since returning from COVID, however, teams have changed things up on the supremely talented interior presence, doubling up on Embiid before he even gets the ball and daring Philly’s facilitators to make a play.
Considering Philly’s lack of elite passing options, that’s a pretty sound strategy.
While Embiid still got his in Charlotte, averaging a point per minute over 74 minutes to go with 11 assists, 23 rebounds, and a pair of steals, he took quite a bit of physical damage in the process, with only 33 free throw attempts to help ease the burden. If that trend continues, Embiid will surely continue to get his, but Doc Rivers may have to pull back on his minutes ever so slightly to ease the burden on his body.
Fortunately, that might actually help the Sixers out a ton, as it would allow Rivers to also stagger Tyrese Maxey‘s minutes more from those of Embiid and give the second-year point guard more opportunities to run the second unit a la his time as the team’s primary offensive option during the first half of November.
Maybe one day Maxey will demand enough respect from opposing defenses to ease up Embiid’s burden in the paint, but for now, when he’s averaging eight points per game instead of 25.4, staggering the minutes Philly’s top-two players share the court in any given game – yes, I said it – could be as beneficial as closing out games with Danny Green at small forward instead of Matisse Thybulle.
Teams have adjusted to Embiid’s return, and his on-court fit alongside Maxey, now the onus is on Rivers to make adjustments of his own.
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Despite having a reputation for being the best post defender in the NBA, Rudy Gobert has never had much success against Joel Embiid. In the six games he’s faced off against the Philadelphia 76ers’ best player, Gobert has allowed Embiid to average 23.8 points, 12.8 rebounds, and three assists per game, all the while recording a +/- of +38, which is very good. But if the Utah Jazz take a page out of Charlotte/Atlanta’s playbook and start to send blitzer after blitzer into the paint to torment Embiid on every touch, it’ll become a whole lot harder to pull out a win against a fully loaded foe with a 70.8 win percentage.