Philadelphia 76ers: Joel Embiid just put a bow on his MVP case

With his regular season officially over, it’s official: Joel Embiid has won the 2021-22 NBA scoring title.

Yup, you read that correctly; between his monster 40-plus point shooting versus the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Indiana Pacers, and the Indiana Pacers, again, Giannis Antetokounmpo‘s uncharacteristically down 26.5 points per game over the month of April, and the premature end to LeBron James‘ season, Embiid has captured the crown won by scores of Hall of Fame-bound players before him and added at least one award to his mantle for the 2021-22 season.

Now granted, this might not be the only award Embiid brings home before he goes on summer vacation. He’s a borderline lock to make an All-NBA team, could very well land on the All-Defense team for the second-straight season, and is a consensus Top-2 finalist for the league MVP award, which will go to a center one way or another.

Will Jojo ultimately pull it out and immortalize his best professional season to date in the annals of NBA history forever? Or will the award be stolen away from him like Andre Iguodala‘s dunk contest win in 2006? Only time will tell, but I’ll tell you what, winning the scoring title certainly won’t hurt Joel Embiid’s case to become the first Philadelphia 76ers MVP since Allen Iverson, even if many a ballot has already been turned in before the title was made official.

Joel Embiid did everything for the Philadelphia 76ers in 2021-22.

The Philadelphia 76ers would be nothing without Joel Embiid.

The team is 12.1 points better per 100 possessions when he’s on the court versus off it, a +7.5 overall when he’s on the court, and a WinShare of 12.1, which is a good five percentage points higher than the Sixers’ next-highest player, Tyrese Maxey. When Embiid is off the court, which is only for an average of 14.2 minutes per game, the Sixers have struggled mightily to remain competitive, largely because his VORP rating of 6.5 is 3.8 times higher than any other player on the team and one of the highest marks of any player in the association.

Embiid ranks first association-wide in points per game at 30.4, fifth in rebounding at 11.7, and first in both free throws attempted per game and free throws made per game, which is a point of contention for some fans but is impressive nonetheless, especially when you consider that he hits them at an 81.4 percent clip, which ranks second among centers behind only Karl-Anthony Towns.

Despite averaging 9.8 post-ups per game, which ranks second association-wide, and leading his team in usage rate by almost a 2-to-1 ratio over the team’s next-highest usage performer, James Harden, Embiid has still finished out the regular season with a shooting split of 49.9 from the field, 37.1 from beyond the arc, and 81.4 from the stripe, which is pretty darn good for a 7-foot tall human that weighs closer to 300 pounds than 250.

When you consider Embiid did all of that with the specter of Ben Simmons hanging over the season, things become all the more impressive.

Now granted, Nikola Jokic had an impressive season too. His Raptor ratings are unbelievably high, his assist numbers are better than most of the association’s point guards, and his ability to facilitate an offense is off the charts. He was rightfully named the MVP last season and will surely compete for the award for years to come, but that doesn’t take away what Embiid was able to accomplish either, as “The Process” has proven himself to be one of the best two-way players the NBA has seen in years, maybe ever.

Will Joel Embiid win the MVP award? That, fortunately or not, depends on the opinions of the voters. It doesn’t matter if he became the first center to average 30 points per game since Moses Malone, the first center to win the scoring title since Shaq, or the first Philadelphia 76ers player to go to five-straight All-Star games since Allen Iverson, if voters feel Nikola Jokic’s accomplishments were more impressive, or opt to split up the Eastern Conference vote over multiple qualified candidates, he will win the award. If that happens, some folks will be very, very, very displeased, but do you know what? Jojo left it all on the court for his team, which is all Philadelphia 76ers fans can really ask for.