Former Joel Embiid teammate casts his vote for Giannis:

Man, these qualifications for MVP change every year for every voter. Remember when Embiid couldn’t win it because he sat out to many games? People loved bringing up the fact no one played in as few games as Bill Walton (58) and still won the MVP. Now people are voting for guys that missed almost 20 games. I’m also tired of per-minute scoring. I’ve heard it now multiple times this week as people make the MVP case for Giannis. The thing they don’t want to tell you is how close it is. Giannis had .97 PPM this season and Embiid had .96. A rounding error separates them. JJ also makes the argument that Giannis is the first guy since Wilt to average 30/10/5 and shoot over 55% from the field. Embiid was one assist per game off that mark and shot 54.8% from the field. Once again, a rounding error. These MVP voters love to strengthen their arguments with “first time this” or “only time that” without casting the full picture. This is the closest MVP race probably of all-time. Every guy deserves it. But it would be malpractice if Joel Embiid finished his career without winning one. This would be like Leonardo DiCaprio never getting an Oscar because he ran into the buzzsaw of Tom Hanks and Daniel Day Lewis. This season is Embiid’s The Revenant. He should’ve won for The Wolf of Wall Street or The Aviator but this will have to do. He was in the driver’s seat in 2020 until a freak knee injury caused him to miss 10 games:

He played 68 games last year and was forced to miss nine-straight because of health and safety protocols. It’s been some terrible luck for the big man. But if we looked back 20 years from now and Joel Embiid didn’t have a trophy there would be plenty of revisionist history. It just sucks that the guy who owes his career revitalization to Embiid is going to be on the wrong side of history. I guess all of those DHOs and screens meant nothing.

Something tells me it’s going to be a little different next time JJ comes to town: