Sixers vs. Hornets was not an instant classic on Monday night, but the good news is that Joel Embiid was dominant and beastly. Sure, Charlotte was on the second night of a back-to-back, and playing without LaMelo Ball, Terry Rozier, Mason Plumlee, and Jalen McDaniels, but when a team is short-handed you want your big man to show no mercy. Be assertive and punish the opponent. I think it was Conan the Barbarian who once said that you are supposed to “crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women.”

That’s what Embiid did in a 43 point, 15 rebound, seven assist performance in which he shot 15-20 from the floor and 12-14 from the foul line. He turned the ball over just three times despite logging a game-high 33.8% usage. According to Stat Muse, it’s Joel’s fourth 40/15/5 game, which is “most in Sixers franchise history by anyone not named Wilt Chamberlain.”

Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that Joel got back to being himself. He only fired two three pointers and did a lot of work in the paint, resulting in a final shot plot looking like this:

And when you go through the film, there’s some nuance to be considered. One of those three pointers was a late-clock heave coming from an inbound pass. Another miss was Joel going up and looking for a foul instead. Most of the work that he did was getting into the post area and establishing early position, then powering to the hoop or rolling with his effective face-up game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hulx6IDETc

Versatility. Just a wide-ranging skill set for the big man. He did a little bit of everything last night, and he played good defense too, chasing around a smaller Hornets team on the perimeter. This was the MVP runner up we saw last season.

Maybe the best play he made was actually an assist, this overtime pass to Tobias Harris:

If Embiid is back to being himself after COVID, then we’re asking the question we were asking weeks ago. Is Daryl Morey gonna get something back for Ben Simmons sooner rather than later? Being patient is fine, and waiting until the deadline is okay, but you don’t want to get stuck in the world’s dumbest pissing contest here. The key thing is, and has always been, maximizing Joel Embiid’s prime, and it would be organizational malpractice to waste a great Embiid year playing $33 million below the salary cap while Simmo the Savage sits around playing Call of Duty. That’s why there has to be at least some urgency here.

The other good thing is that there’s only a half-game separating 7th and 4th in the Eastern Conference. The Sixers fell back to .500, and could have dropped below that mark for the first time in a long time, but they got a nice road win in Atlanta and caught Charlotte at the perfect time. They play another in North Carolina on Wednesday, then get Utah and Golden State at home.