Willy Hernangomez had himself a career evening in his second bout of the season versus the Philadelphia 76ers.
Mind you, his team still lost handly, and the player he matched up against for most of the night, Joel Embiid, dropped 42 points in front of his adoring fanbase, but goodness, for a player averaging 15.5 minutes of action a night, few expected to see the Sixers draftee – seriously, look it up – score 29 points in 30 minutes of action.
While his brother Juancho may have more Philly pedigree for staring in the forthcoming Adam Sandler movie Hustle, which was shot in our fair city and features a bunch of Sixers players and coaches, Willy put in work where it actually mattered: On the hallowed court of the Wells Fargo Center.
After bouncing around the league over the past few years, playing for three teams over five seasons, Willy Hernangomez has finally logged a signature performance and will surely remember this game forever, though not for the same reason fans of the Philadelphia 76ers will.
No one center can outperform the Philadelphia 76ers’ best player.
Normally, teams try to slow Joel Embiid down by doubling him on defense with multiple bodies in the paint.
Unfortunately for them, Embiid has found a way to consistently beat that look by taking things coast-to-coast, splitting defenders, and developing a mid-range game that would make both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant proud.
To Willy Hernangomez’s credit, the fifth-year Pelicans’ player found a new way to test Embiid, namely by attacking strength with strength and being uber aggressive on offense. In the first half, it worked. The Pelicans rode Hernangomez to an eight-point lead heading into the half, and outside of Tobias Harris, the Sixers couldn’t find a perimeter answer to help alleviate the pressure in the paint.
This strategy, which I’m sure Embiid will now face more often moving forward, would have surely given a lesser player fits and could have potentially thrown them off their game against an undermanned foe in an otherwise inconsequential game, but not JoJo, not “The Process.” After heading to the locker room for a few minutes, Embiid returned to the court in the third and went all Super Saiyan on the New Orleans Pelicans who were in attendance, finishing out the game with 38 plus points for the fourth straight game.
Sidebar: Do you know who was the last player to accomplish that feat in a Philadelphia 76ers uniform? Yeah, that’d be Wilt Chamberlain all the way back in 1967. Not bad company to be in at all.
In the NBA, opportunities are divvied up equally. Some players are afforded a ton and can spend years trying to figure things out due to whether they were drafted or their pedigree. Other players have to wait and wait and wait to shoot their shots if said opportunity ever arises. For Willy Hernangomez, he turned only his fourth start of the season into a career-best performance against the premier player at his position in the world. It’s just a shame his contract doesn’t come up until 2024, as I would imagine some team, including the Philadelphia 76ers, would happily pay him more than $2.4 to play a reserve role as either an “Embiid Buster” or partner in crime.