With a 20-10 record after a win over the Chicago Bulls Friday night, the Philadelphia 76ers have the best record in the Eastern Conference. Joel Embiid scored a career-high 50 points against the Bulls, and he filled the rest of the stat sheet (17 rebounds, five assists, four blocks and two steals) as well.
Embiid is averaging a career-high 30.5 points per game this season (second in the league), with career-bests in field goal (54.7 percent), free throw (85.3) and 3-point percentage (40 percent). He is also averaging a league-high 11.6 free throw attempts per game, with a league-best 32.3 PER (Player Efficiency Rating).
Embiid will probably never be a high-volume perimeter marksman. But he is willing to take them (3.5 attempts per game from beyond the arc for his career), and that’s good.
After Friday night’s game, Embiid told the media what he feels makes him “unguardable.”
Has Joel Embiid really changed his game?
While his rates are up this year, a look at his Basketball Reference shot distribution shows Embiid has always taken a fair percentage of his shots from 3-16 feet out. But his NBA.com shot tracking shows an uptick in pull-ups from last year (22.7 percent of his shots) to this year (33 percent). As a residual, his combined rate of shots off one or two dribbles is up in nearly exact parallel.
In terms of his mid-range game, Embiid has been much more effective this year. Last season he converted 40.7 percent from 10-16 feet and 35.5 percent from 16 feet out to the 3-point line. This year, those numbers are 52 percent and 63.8 percent respectively (according to Basketball Reference). With the improvement from beyond the arc, from 33.1 percent last season, you’ve got an evolved, more modern offensive big man.
The arrival of Daryl Morey as general manager brought a shift in philosophy for the 76ers. Josh Richardson and Al Horford were swapped out for Seth Curry and Danny Green, with Tobias Harris shifting back to the four. Better roster construction around Embiid and Ben Simmons has yielded more space to operate offensively. Embiid has also cited a change in his own mentality, more than the coaching change from Brett Brown to Doc Rivers, for the uptick in his game.
Whatever the reason, or for all of the reasons, Embid has reached a new level offensively and the 76ers are atop the East.
