Do the new City Edition jerseys suck? Who cares as long as Joel Embiid plays like God while wearing the uniform.

In Sunday night’s win, he put up 59 points on 19-28 shooting, hit 20 of 24 free throws, grabbed 11 rebounds, tossed eight assists, blocked seven shots, and got the turnovers under control in the second half. A truly dominant performance for the ages, one of the best two-way efforts you will ever see.

Five thoughts:

 

1) Remember when Embiid didn’t even play in back-to-backs? He just scored a career-high on short rest. Never forget that nugget when we’re talking about this five years from now. For all the talk of Embiid being soft, injured, cooked, etc, he’s coming off a season where he played a career-high 68 games and has played 10 of 14 thus far in 2022.

2) Say what you will about 59 points, but they don’t win that game without the defense and the blocks specifically. This was a three-point game with 90 seconds on the clock when Embiid pinned Collin Sexton’s layup to the backboard:

Tyrese Maxey noted this after the game, pointing out rim protection when asked generically about Embiid’s performance:

Joel Embiid is very good at basketball. There’s nothing I can really say about it. He’s just really good at basketball. There are some things that he does, other than when he decides he wants to throw the ball to the other team (joking). It’s good to see him back. He’s having a lot of fun. I think you can tell he’s hitting his groove, honestly. Whatever he had with his foot kind of messed him up. I thought he was in really good shape, then his foot kind of messed with him. Then he got sick. That messes with your wind. And now I think he’s finally hitting his stride. He’s just really good at basketball. He had 59 points. The thing I was most proud of him was how he protected the rim. Those guys were driving hard. He was blocking shots. Late in the fourth quarter, he had the switch out a couple guys. He was huge.

Blocks never tell the whole story about rim protection, because oftentimes bigs alter shots just by their presence and positioning alone. You’d have to go look at contested field goals and parse the numbers, but for what it’s worth, Embiid is tied for 5th in the NBA with 2.5 blocks per 48 minutes – an extrapolated number that puts him behind only Brook Lopez, Clint Capela, Ivica Zubac, and Nic Claxton.

3) Embiid is still the free throw king and will again feast from the line this season. 11.8 FTA per game is second in the NBA, behind only Giannis, who is averaging 12.3. The rub here is that Embiid shoots 83.1% from the line and Giannis only shoots 64.9%, so we’ve got two completely different stories here in terms of efficiency. And when you look at the other players comprising the top of the heap, they’re guards like Luka, Damian Lillard, and Trae Young. For Embiid to get to the line as frequently as he does, AND hit at such a high percentage, that really tells a story antithetical to what we’d think we’re getting from most modern day bigs.

4) That left side face-up is still money. Here’s the shot zone chart through 10 played games:

50% and 53.8% from those two zones where he catches, turns, faces, and simply shoots over guys. 14-27 when you combine quadrants, which is good for just a shade over 50%.

For some context, Joel shot 39.5% and 53.1% from those same two quadrants last year, so even though the sample size is smaller, he’s hitting those bread and butter face-ups mid-range efforts at a higher clip this season. Last night he was 4-5 (80%) in these zones.

5) Sixers PR pulled this via Stathead:

This 59-point outing now is the fifth highest scoring game in 76ers history, trailing performances by Hall of Famers WILT CHAMBERLAIN (68, 65, 62) and ALLEN IVERSON (60).

Don’t let the Sixers’ mediocre start to the season affect your perception of this performance. Allen Iverson only crested 60 points once in his career, and he was a high-usage perimeter player. Embiid and Wilt both are in this conversation as bigs, albeit in different eras of basketball.

Here’s another stat, also from the team:

Embiid’s career-high performance came the day after scoring 42 points against Atlanta on Nov. 12, giving him 101 points over the two-game span. This marks the fourth time in franchise history that a player has scored 101 points in consecutive games (Chamberlain – 115 points – 1967, Iverson – 105 points – 2004). 

I went back and looked at A.I.’s game log from 2004, and that happened in December, with a 54 point road game in Milwaukee and 51 point home game against Utah. There was a day off in between though, so they flew back to Philly while Joel did his damage in a home/home back-to-back.