Joel Embiid changes the math for the Philadelphia 76ers

The Miami Heat have a lot of talent.

They have Villanova’s own Kyle Lowry, a championship-winning head coach, and Jimmy Butler, who will forever be one of the biggest “what ifs” in Philadelphia history.

Factor in some hyped up shooters in Tyler Herro/Duncan Robinson, the NBA’s best glue-guy/sneakerhead in P.J. Tucker, and a seemingly always good supporting cast of “no-name” players like Max Strus, and there’s little reason to wonder why the Heat are a perennial playoff team in the East and came darn close to winning it all back in the Bubble.

But the Philadelphia 76ers have Joel Embiid, and that, my friends, proved to be the difference in the two teams’ Saturday night showdown on South Beach.

Joel Embiid single-handedly keeps the Philadelphia 76ers a contender.

Basketball is a weird sport.

Moreso than baseball, football, and even hockey, basketball is a star-driven sport where having three upper-echelon players could prove better than two even with a lesser supporting cast. While occasionally you’ll see a squad show out in spectacular fashion without a household name plastered on the home game tickets, Mike Budenholzer‘s Atlanta Hawks of yesterseason comes to mind, teams seldom get better when they cash out a star player for multiple starting-caliber players, as most recently the Houston Rockets will tell you.

Joel Embiid changes that math ever so slightly for the Philadelphia 76ers.

On paper, the Sixers shouldn’t be very good. They’re down their second-best player, have a second-year combo guard running the point full time, and their current second option, Tobias Harris, is offsetting his scoring and rebounding with poor efficiency numbers and shot clock-killing non-drives.

And yet, the Sixers are good. They’re a game back from fourth place in the East despite suffering through a COVID-fueled month of November and find themselves the owners of a 9-1 record since Christmas.

Why? Well, largely because Embiid is averaging 31.8 points and 10.1 rebounds on 53.7 percent shooting from the field over the last 30 days while fueling his team to a 15-7 record while on the field since returning from COVID.

Oh yeah, and didn’t I mention that Embiid had COVID like two months ago? Because he did, and might not even be back to 100 percent just yet.

Embiid leads the Sixers in scoring, rebounding, blocks, and free throw attempts. He averages the second-most assists behind only Tyrese Maxey and has the second-highest assist percentage behind only Braxton Key, who played all of six minutes for the team during his 10-day contract.

Heck, Embiid has even remained one of the Sixers’ best 3 point shooters, as he’s draining 36.5 percent of his shots from deep, which ranks fifth on the team among active players.

When Embiid plays, the Sixers can beat anyone. When Embiid gets hot, no deficit is insurmountable. And in clutch situations, especially with the game on the line, Embiid is a legitimate closer, as he has more points in said situations than the next-leading player, DeMar DeRozan, by a 20 point margin.

Where the season was once considered punt-able, worthy of being played out in favor of maximizing the return on a Ben Simmons trade, one has to wonder if the Sixers still feel that way. Securing a player like Damian Lillard is great and a worthy endeavor, but when you have the best player in the NBA, which Embiid is very much playing like, going all-in on fielding the best possible roster has to be taken into consideration too, as no player gets an infinite number of MVP-caliber seasons.

Would the Sixers be better today with Tyrese Haliburton on the court than Simmons playing CoD at home? Yes. Would the Sixers be better with an analytical darling like Kenrich Williams on the court instead of Shake Milton rehabbing a back injury away from the team? Yes as well. But would the Sixers be good enough to lay waste to the Brooklyn Nets, Milwaukee Bucks, and either the Phoenix Suns or Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals? That, my friends, is the question Daryl Morey and company need to answer.

On the court, Joel Embiid is a cheat code. He’s Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl, Michael Vick in Madden 2004, and Akuma in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. His presence alone automatically makes the Philadelphia 76ers a better team than the sum of their parts would suggest, and with a better supporting cast, he very well could lead the team to a championship a la Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks, who really have two number threes and no true number two option. This sort of story could be written after every single game Embiid plays. Why? Because any random game he plays would be a career outing for 95 percent of the NBA.