Joel Embiid is beating decades-old legendary scoring records with an unreal efficiency, he is doing what Wilt, Kareem, and McAdoo did in far lesser time per game.
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The previous eras of the NBA were bizarrely unreal, not only because of how insanely good the likes of Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were. The big men who maintained their athleticism for more than a decade or two, did that without the medical advancements of the current era.
Players at that time played almost all games of the season throughout their careers without an injury or carrying one which probably ended their careers. They played well over 40 minutes each night in a 48-minute game and never thought of managing their load, while players these days often sit games while strictly playing less than 36 minutes a game.
Big men, however, play even less than 36, most of them averaging not more than 33 or so minutes a game. Joel Embiid is no different from them in terms of game time. But what the Cameroonian has done this season isn’t comparable to anything that any Center of any era could do.
Joel Embiid – the first Center in 40 years to average over 30 ppg, doing so in far lesser time than everyone else.
The 28-year-old Philadelphia superstar is having a career season, averaging a league-high 30.4 points to go alongside 11.6 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 1.1 steals, and 1.5 blocks per game. He is shooting 49.5% from the field and 36.5% from downtown. And he’s doing all that in 33.7 minutes per game.
Have a look at minutes played per game by the centers who averaged more points than him in a season.
This is a list of centers averaging 30 PPG in a season.
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Look at the minutes per game. pic.twitter.com/RGqS1spbne— StatMuse (@statmuse) April 6, 2022
None of those 5s could do that playing under 40 minutes, which gives us the idea of how great Embiid has been this season and makes his case much stronger for MVP this season against Nikola Jokic.
The Joker is also having an unbelievable season himself. He’s destroying all the advanced statistics and could have repeated as MVP in a one-sided fashion had Embiid done his thing some other time.
But it’s been a joy watching this year’s regular-season for any NBA fan with Play-offs race, MVP race, scoring title race all going down to the wire. Two of those races might end with Embiid finishing up as the winner, but surely those are not the only rewards he’d be content with this season.
