Sixers: Advanced stats prove Joel Embiid’s playoff dominance

Anyone who’s watched Joel Embiid in the postseason knows that the superstar can elevate his game to another level of intensity. Though sometimes Embiid takes it easy defensively during the regular season to maintain his stamina and protect against injury, when playoff time comes around, he ratchets his effort and commitment on that end up a notch; offensively, there’s barely another level for the MVP candidate to reach, but Embiid continues to be his wildly efficient self.

Now that BBall Index has released their latest updates to LEBRON, their cutting-edge statistic measuring player impact on both ends of the floor relative to an average player, the data reflects Embiid’s dominant playoff impact.

Though the Sixers have still failed to even make the conference finals, LEBRON rates Joel Embiid as the single most impactful player in the NBA during the last three postseasons.

Advanced stats paint Sixers All-Star Joel Embiid as the NBA’s most dominant playoff performer.

The five players immediately following Embiid in the LEBRON rankings? Giannis Antetokounmpo, Anthony Davis, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, and Stephen Curry. That’s pretty good company to keep.

What’s almost more impressive is how much Embiid’s dominance in LEBRON comes as a result of his two-way abilities. Embiid’s +8.00 LEBRON is, quite literally, perfectly balanced: he has a +4.00 O-LEBRON and +4.00 D-LEBRON. While his offensive impact ranks just fifth — he trails Steph, Trae Young, James Harden, and Giannis there — his defensive impact is tops in the NBA.

Though the data for LEBRON is very recent — 2014 was the first year the statistic was calculated — Embiid’s LEBRON for the 2019-2021 postseasons is the third-highest of all time. The only two higher-scoring players will also be familiar to Sixers fans: 2017-19 Joel Embiid and, in first place with a monstrous +9.59 LEBRON, 2017-19 Kawhi Leonard.

These numbers should put any suggestions that Embiid is a playoff choker to rest. His ability to consistently put in elite performances on both sides of the ball in the postseason, especially while dealing with obstacles varying from an illness in 2019 to a torn MCL in 2021, cements him as one of the league’s premier postseason performers.

In fact, Sixers fans looking to assign blame for the team’s underperformances should look at two factors: the underperformance of Embiid’s co-stars Ben Simmons and Tobias Harris, and the complete failure of the team’s bench units to play with any level of competence in the postseason.

Simmons ranks as just the 34th best player in the league over the last three postseasons which, while better than I’m sure some Sixers fans would have guessed given his reputation, is still an underperformance for an All-Star guard. Tobias Harris comes in a nightmarish 275th place with a terrible -1.48 LEBRON — although, since LEBRON takes team performance while a player is on the court into account, all of Harris’s minutes buoying the bench unit anchor him down here.

And the bench unit is also responsible for some embarrassingly low performances on the LEBRON chart. Between 2019 and 2021, three of Philadelphia’s most important bench players from last season — Dwight Howard, Matisse Thybulle, and Shake Milton — put up LEBRONs of -5.58, -5.27, and -4.50, respectively. These numbers reflect the ineptitude of the team’s bench in the past few postseasons.

While advanced statistics should always be taken in context and with a mild grain of salt, the newest LEBRON data matches up with the eye test. Any Sixers fan who’s watched the past few postseason flameouts know the story by now: not even Joel Embiid’s heroic efforts can make up for the mistakes of his teammates when the going gets tough.