Philadelphia 76ers: Joel Embiid's December May be More Realistic

Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid isn’t slumping, but his December is a bit down statistically, and it may be a more realistic gauge of his career.

Philadelphia 76ers rookie center Joel Embiid is well-known all around the league by now. While he was drafted in 2014, he was often dismissed by non-Sixers fans as a possible legitimate threat in the NBA because of his injury history, and his two years off from competitive basketball.

While Embiid is still very much so in the embryonic stage of his career, he’s starting off at a level that is much higher than a lot of the younger players in the NBA. He’s shown that by blowing most rookie and sophomore players out of the water in scoring, and continuing to prove that he’s an anomaly of a big man in the NBA by hitting 3-pointers while remaining dominant at the rim.

He’s nearly 7-3, and can hit 3-pointers at a high rate. At one point this season, he was shooting a cumulative 50 percent from beyond the arc.

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The talk of the town has been positive surrounding Embiid, but something we aren’t necessarily talking about as of late is the slight dip Embiid has taken in December so far.

Embiid before December

Minutes: 22.8
Points: 18.2
Rebounds: 7.8
Assists: 1.5
3PA: 2.5
3P%: 50.0

Embiid in December

Minutes: 26.9
Points: 18.8
Rebounds: 6.8
Assists: 2.1
3PA: 3.5
3P%: 32.1

There are three games left in December, but chances are that those statistics are going to stay mostly the same. So, what gives? And why isn’t anyone talking about the fact that Embiid is not only taking an extra 3-pointer a game in December, but making them at nearly 20 percent less of a rate than he was prior to December?

Thats a lot of points left un-scored, despite how well he has been able to score so far in his career.

Things to take into account

The biggest thing we need to remember with Embiid this month is that these have been the first times that the Sixers have tried to run him with Jahlil Okafor, and also the first times the team has tried to run him, Okafor, and Nerlens Noel all in the same games.

That has been statistically devastating for all of the big men. Until the Sixers trade a big, the lower stats for the bigs may occur simply due to a need to spread minutes across the three of them. There’s only so many minutes and so much ball time to go around, so when you have players on the floor (in Okafor and Embiid) that demand the ball in their hands on offense to be effective, there’s going to be trouble.

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Another thing to remember is that Embiid’s minutes restriction was bumped up from 24 minutes to 28 minutes. Exhaustion is not something we have seen a ton of from Embiid, and he has been industrious player in all moments on the floor, but there are points late in the game where he seems a bit worn down and his play becomes lethargic.

One other notable thing is that Embiid has played just eight games in December, so there’s not a huge sample size. He has played 12 games outside of December.

So what gives?

Okay, so Embiid has had to coexist with other players and has been given more playing time. Aren’t those both things that are part of the job description?

Well, yes, they are, but what we saw in the first few months was a very unrealistic version of Embiid that is very hard to sustain throughout the course of a season. To be honest, after his first game against the Oklahoma City Thunder where he scored 20 points and hit one of his three 3-pointers, I thought we’d see him fall off a bit in the coming games.

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He carried that momentum, though, and showed that his skill sets were no joke. The dip in December is proof, though, that perhaps his play was at least somewhat influenced by the hype surrounding him.

We should also realize and appreciate that his assist numbers are actually up, which proves that maybe the reason for the stats going down is him just edging out parts of his game that he wasn’t really focusing on in the early weeks or his career. He’s still filling out to what he’s going to be when everything’s all finished.

Moving forward

So, with what we have seen in the first few months (pre-December and during December) can we conclude that his play from pre-December is sustainable, or is the lower — yet still solid — play from December more realistic to expect?

Of course, with almost any NBA player, the lower stats are easier to call sustainable. The thing is, with Embiid, and how much of a distinctive and modern player he is, there’s no precedent to go off of. He has taken pieces from a lot of players who preceded him, but the sum of his skills has not quite been replicated by anyone in the NBA yet.

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If I had to make a guess, I would say that December is more sustainable over the course of a career, but don’t count Embiid’s 3-point shot out just yet. He’s going to score, he’s going to make an impact, and he’s going to do a good job. Just because his unique first 12 games are not always going to be replicable, it doesn’t mean we need to be concerned.

Joel Embiid’s December May be a More Realistic Picture of Him

By Josh Wilson | Dec 26, 2016