Philadelphia 76ers: Even Jayson Tatum knows Joel Embiid was robbed

The Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys, the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets, the Philadelphia Flyers and the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the Philadelphia 76ers and the Boston Celtics; four rivalries that are as deep-rooted as they are contentious.

While games between any two of these clubs are technically worth no more than any other, at least during the regular season, it’s hard not to feel like they are.

So naturally, when a rival player, in this case, Jayson Tatum of the Celtics, goes to bat for Joel Embiid and the ridiculousness of his second-team All-NBA selection, it turns heads even more than the player in question tweeting, “Miami needs another Star,” which, ya know, wasn’t taken out of context even a little bit.

Was Tatum right? Did the NBA’s archaic positional criteria for the All-NBA teams rob “The Process” of his rightful spot on the first team, or are fans of the Philadelphia 76ers maybe, just maybe, overreacting to this situation in a way the fanbase has never, ever, ever done before? The answer may surprise you.

The Philadelphia 76ers’ center frontcourt player has a right to be upset.

Joel Embiid received 57 first-team All-NBA votes, which is the fifth most among NBA players. He had more first-team votes than Jayson Tatum, more total points than Taco Jay, and didn’t receive a single third-team vote, which is four fewer than Duce’s dad received.

So what gives? How did Embiid get more first-team votes, more overall points, and fewer third-team votes than Tatum, and yet, he was placed on the second-team for the fourth time in five seasons?

Well, our friend Kyle Neubeck of Philly Voice swooped in and provided some insight into the situation. You see, according to Neubeck, only 12 of Embiid’s first-team All-NBA votes came at center, with the other 45  coming at forward. Why, you may ask, is this relevant? Well, because all 49 of Tatum’s first-team votes were at the forward spot, and thus, he was awarded a spot on the first team, and Embiid was placed on the second team despite having more first-team votes than Ja Morant, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and DeMar DeRozan combined.

That feels crazy, right? A player gets more votes than all but four players in the NBA, and yet, he somehow falls to the second team because of semantics?

Basically, yeah.

Now, as discussed more at length here, in 2012, the NBA removed the Center spot from the All-Star game in the hopes of avoiding token spots for less than deserving players. For the most part, that decision has been a resounding success, with only a few occasions where an All-Star team didn’t end up having a “traditional” center in their starting five. Granted, Embiid played a pretty big role in that effort, as he’s been a fixture of the East’s starting five for the last half-decade, but hey, if two of the best players in the NBA right now didn’t play at the center spot, we shouldn’t be having this conversation.

Ultimately, Jayson Tatum is on the first team All-NBA squad, and Joel Embiid is not. For fans of the Philadelphia 76ers, that stinks, and for fans of the Boston Celtics, that’s probably pretty darn cool. Unless Embiid magically takes his game up a notch, which feels borderline impossible, or the Denver Nuggets decide to pair up Nikola Jokic with a traditional center Al Horford-style, the only real solution to this problem is to follow Tatum’s guidance and make the rosters positionless… or start calling Joel Embiid a shooting guard; that might work too.