I’m back.

Kinker has returned from England/Scotland/Ireland/Wales, and while all of those countries were fantastic, nothing compares to the blue collar, lunch-pail carrying, workmanlike city of Philadelphia.

Anyway, Ben Simmons won Rookie of the Year last night. Good for him; he deserved it. The voting wasn’t even close, which surprised me. I thought for sure Donovan Mitchell would have received more first place nods, but I was wrong.

Joel Embiid finished second in Defensive Player of the Year voting, which I do think is fair. Rudy Gobert was fantastic this season, even if he did miss a significant chunk of time through injury. Did he feed on tanking teams during the second half of the year? Maybe, but I think the same could be said of Embiid when the Sixers were trouncing mediocre Eastern Conference squads before he suffered the facial fracture in March. Joel ended up playing 63 games while Gobert featured in 56, so the difference was ultimately negligible, in my mind. Utah was a juggernaut when Gobert returned, going 30-7 over a stretch that began in January and carried into April. The Sixers, of course, won 16 straight to finish the year, a run that included Embiid for about half of that time.

A quick look at the per-36 numbers for each player:

Gobert had better block and steal numbers while committing fewer fouls.

Advanced numbers show he also out-performed Joel in defensive box plus/minus and defensive win shares:

Continue Reading

It went from bad to worse last night when Joel Embiid’s precautionary testing revealed an orbital fracture and concussion, suffered Wednesday in a second-quarter collision with Markelle Fultz.

The Sixers’ big man is expected to miss two to four weeks of actions, according to ESPN, and would likely return for the start of the playoffs or midway through round one. He has yet to undergo surgery.

Until then, the Sixers will play eight more regular season games without him, a schedule that includes just two playoff teams and six non-playoff teams, with four on the road and four at home. It is not, thankfully, murderer’s row, and this roster is good enough to beat the likes of Atlanta and Dallas sans Joel in a continued push for home court advantage.

For what it’s worth, the Sixers are 3-8 without Embiid this season, but five of those losses came on the second night of a back-to-back, long before Joel was cleared to play in those games. In full context, not only are you missing your best player, but you’re traveling and tired, so I don’t know how much those back-to-back losses can be blamed on Embiid’s absence and how much can be blamed on weariness in general.

Continue Reading

…the same storyline from September and October.

It’s Joel Embiid’s health; only this time we’re talking about getting him ready for the playoffs as the Sixers jostle for seeding in a tightly packed Eastern Conference.

Brett Brown has gone on the record several times saying that he prioritizes “delivering” a healthy Embiid to the postseason versus claiming home court advantage, so I threw the question to Twitter this morning to see what y’all prefer:

Assuming you can't have both, pick one scenario:

— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) March 22, 2018

It was 70% to 30% in favor of a rested Embiid when I hit the “publish” button.

That surprises me. I thought home court would win in a landslide.

Of course, defining a “rested” Embiid and a “non-rested” Embiid is an arbitrary exercise. Joel says he feels good and I take that at face value. I mean, he missed some games a few months back after the triple-overtime epic with Oklahoma City, but he’s off the injury report, the wrist and back seem fine, and he’s playing back-to-backs for the first time in his career. He’s come a long way in a very short time.

That doesn’t mean there might not be a cumulative fatiguing of sorts, something different from the day-to-day grind of playing X minutes one night, then X minutes the next night. It’s a macro vs. micro type of situation, I think. Embiid is on pace to play 70+ games, a number that I highly, highly doubt anybody had predicted a few months back. He hasn’t come close to playing this many games at any point of his career.

Continue Reading