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Joel Embiid has struggled to consistency realise his phenomenal potential and, as long as that continues, so will the Philadelphia 76ers, writes Sky Sports NBA analyst Mark Deeks.
Live NBA: Philadelphia @ Houston
Saturday 4th January 1:00am
Sixers center Embiid probably would not find it a criticism if you called him an enigma. He seems to embrace the role. He is a showman, a superstar of the game with genuine personality, and a phenomenal, unique basketball talent who combines size, skill and a remarkably quick ascent to the game’s very top, having played organised basketball for so few years.
His improvement has slowed perhaps over the last couple of years, though. Due inevitably to limited practice time, itself because of the need to manage his health and longevity so intensely, some of the limitations and drawbacks in his game are the same as they ever were.
4:35 Specifically, Embiid still likes to take a lot of jump shots from both mid- and long-ranges without being the most efficient of shooters. He seems to take a little too long to read double teams in the post, loses control of the ball quite often (and particularly so in late-game situations) and still does very little with his left hand.
Similarly, and relatedly, the 76ers as a team over the last couple of years have the same sort of flaws that they always have had, too. The team struggles for consistent spacing and multi-positional shooting, commits too many turnovers and tends to flounder in late-game situations (something only briefly addressed with Jimmy Butler on the team and an issue that is flaring up again now that he has gone).
The Sixers do not quite know what to do with Ben Simmons in the half-court, lack offensive diversity outside of a heavy diet of perimeter passes, struggle to defend without Embiid and have trouble with consistency on both ends of the floor.
The inconsistency can be seen from game to game and from half to half, and even more so from home to road, yet the best illustration of it might be to look at how the team performs against the league’s top half versus the bottom.
1:01 So far this season, the 76ers have two wins over the Boston Celtics, and one over each of the Utah Jazz, Milwaukee Bucks, Miami Heat, Toronto Raptors and Denver Nuggets, while also dropping games to the Washington Wizards, Phoenix Suns and the Orlando Magic (twice).
They have been the personification of streakiness, currently on a three-game losing streak, itself coming after a three-game winning streak, one preceded by another three-game losing streak, which again had come on the heels of a five-game winning streak featuring the Nuggets, Raptors and second Celtics victories.
No one more amply illustrates this inconsistency than Embiid.
Take for example the win over the Bucks. Seemingly motivated by the prospect of the match-up against the Eastern Conference’s best team, and against reigning NBA Most Valuable Player Giannis Antetokounmpo in particular, Embiid showed up with a big performance, featuring 31 points and 11 rebounds in only 28 foul-affected minutes, plus playing some ridiculous defense in the backline.
1:53 The very next game, though, he shot only 8-of-21 from the field against Orlando, sought not to get the perfect position in the post that he can so easily do, wanted mostly to camp out at the three-point line, committed the same types of sloppy turnovers that have long plagued him but which were not there in the much tighter Christmas Day performance against Milwaukee, and ended up with a negative net rating for the game.
Embiid openly admits to being motivated by individual match-ups, and particularly those to whom he is compared. Sometimes, this goes too far, as evidenced in his early-season dust-up with Minnesota Timberwolves center Karl-Anthony Towns, which led to a suspension. In these moments, however, Embiid’s genuine dominance is on show, and it comes on both ends.
0:43 We are told that the post-up play is going out of style, with its inherent inefficiencies better understood and thus demonised in modern orthodox thinking in favour of big men rolling to the rim and shooting from away from the basket.
Embiid, however, bucks this trend by being at by far his most efficient when playing in the post. He is shooting 53.1 per cent from the field this season in post-up possessions per Synergy Sports, while also getting to the free throw line 29.1 per cent of the time as well. He hits them from there, too, thus scoring 1.135 points per possession as a post-up option, one of the best marks in the league.
It is also a much better mark than he himself scores as a roll man or cutter; too easily stripped of the ball by opposing guards reaching down into his dribble, Embiid is turnover-prone on the roll and the cut, another aspect of his game that stands in defiance against new-age thinking. And when considering that the 76ers’ offense is so pick-and-roll centric, it also somewhat goes against his team’s overall make-up, too.
Notwithstanding this unique offensive cocktail, Embiid’s best work has always come defensively. When suitably motivated, he is a technically very precise protector of the paint and the rim, with the innate size and strength to contest anybody in the area. On the days that his knee is holding up, he is mobile enough to cover good ground in there, a deterring presence that no one else in the NBA takes for granted. A motivated Embiid is a truly gifted two-way player that really can dominate.
If he is only sometimes realising his phenomenal potential, though, then it will not be a coincidence that his team is only sometimes doing so too. Although Embiid has been presented with an indisputably sub-optimal blend of pieces around him, including starting All-Star center Al Horford at power forward – a player signed this summer even when wing depth, backcourt creativity and shooting were known to be more urgently needed in a ‘let’s-just-get-the-All-Star-while-we-can-and-rebalance-it-all-later’ kind of move – Embiid’s own inconsistencies and stagnated development embody that of the team around him.
It might help his offensive rhythm and ball security down in the post if he had a better-spaced floor to pass out of double teams to. But the floor would also be better spaced if he was better at finding those that they do have. There is a correlation, and there is also causation.
Anchored by their troubling frailties on the road and without being any obviously better than their near-miss campaigns of the last two seasons, it is understandable if there is an urgency among 76ers fans to want to see greater progress towards at least Eastern Conference title contention from a team that was once thought to offer so much, and who had bottomed out so spectacularly to precipitate it.
Yet rather than urgency, perhaps more consistent slow growth should be sought after instead, and for all of Simmons’ stagnation in the back-court, Embiid has not been beyond reproach either.
Notwithstanding the aforementioned required polishing of certain skills, ‘Embiid the Enigma’ is as good as he wants to be on any given night.
But when he is not playing at his best, the high-ceiling, low-floor 76ers are a long way off the pace.
Watch the Philadelphia 76ers take on the Houston Rockets live on Sky Sports Action in the early hours of Saturday morning (1am).
