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Joel Embiid Jokes That He is Done Shooting Three Pointers
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Joel Embiid was 0-3 from beyond the arc on Wednesday night in Detroit, and joked that he might be done shooting threes forever:
He still had 26 points on 8-18 shooting and was 10-10 from the foul line. Embiid is 11.5% from three this season but it’s obviously not doing much damage to his individual numbers or the team’s play as a whole.
This has always been a point of contention, Joel taking threes. For years, people wanted him to “get his ass in the paint.” (paraphrasing)
But that middle-high three pointer is open every time, whether it’s in the halfcourt offense or taken as a trailing catch-and-shoot three as he lumbers his way down the floor. Joel had a look in the fourth quarter last night, about 44 seconds, that wasn’t even close, so you certainly don’t want it to ever come down to Embiid heaving it up with the game on the line. That’s never going to be the best look this Sixers team can create.
And yet, when Joel was shooting 37 and 38% from three just a few years ago, it really was an effective weapon in low doses. He was a 38.8% three pointer shooter in 2023-2024, for instance, but he only tried 3.6 per game while chucking a career-high 21.8 field goals on average. You could live with that. Schematically, it forced opposing bigs to come up a little higher and pick up Joel in uncomfortable positions, further from the rim, which opened things up for everybody else. That was the natural progression of Embiid becoming a multi-level scorer as his offensive game really took off.
If he can’t hit those shots this year, bigs won’t guard him at the three point line. They’ll let him fire up bricks. You can use that space to bring up another shooter, Maxey, perhaps, and DHO with Embiid for an open look. Most bigs in those spaces are just setting screens and handing the ball off to a guard. The Sixers have had a lot of early success simply running pick and roll with Joel or LeBron else as a screener, so the Embiid high-middle delay action of years past doesn’t need to be as prominent in this offense.
Of course, if Embiid isn’t standing on the arc, he’s either at the elbow or down low, where he dominates. Historically, you can handle him shooting threes in low doses as a 33-37% guy. But the Sixers have so many dawgs this year that it doesn’t have to be like that anymore.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com