Joel Embiid, Second Team All-Defense and now Second Team All-NBA.
He was beat out by Rudy Gobert in the former category and Nikola Jokic in the latter, with those votes looking like this:
Before we do a brief Jokic/Embiid comparison, a few thoughts:
Right, Embiid and Jokic numbers after the jump:
Jokic played more games than Joel did, leading his team to a higher seed in a better conference. I think that’s probably the macro-level angle that a lot of people would use to justify having Embiid on the second team.
It’s true that Joel’s all-around game is probably better. He blocks more shots, alters more attempts at the rim, and really serves a defensive anchor in a way that Jokic does not. Jokic, on the other hand, shoots at a higher percentage from the floor and the foul line and throws more than eight assists per 36 minutes, an elite and unselfish offensive game that helped Denver, a team with no other All-Stars, to the second seed in the West. Embiid suffered the knee injury and barely even saw the floor down the stretch, while Joker was putting up 19 points, 11 rebounds, and 6 assists in the month of March.
If you want to look at on/off, here’s what the numbers say:
So there was a bigger swing in on/off for Joel vs. Jokic, a difference of 7.7 vs. 3.8. You could also argue that the Sixers had a bigger dropoff from Embiid to Boban/Amir Johnson/Greg Monroe/etc, vs. the Nuggets putting Mason Plumlee on the court.
Either way, they’re both phenomenal players. I think if Embiid had played a few more games and didn’t struggle with the late-season knee issue, then he may have gotten the nod over Jokic.