Once again Joel Embiid walked with giants Monday. Those known by their first names (Wilt, Kobe). Those known by their initials (MJ, AI). Those who are members of a very exclusive club.
This is no longer a surprise. This is the company Embiid has been keeping for a while now. Still, his 70-point explosion in the Sixers’ 133-123 victory over San Antonio emphatically renewed his membership.
His total was a franchise record, and the highest by an NBA player this season. It also made him one of just nine NBA players to ever notch 70 or more. That such an outburst came on the same night as a 62-point showing by Minnesota’s Karl-Anthony Towns – much less the 18th anniversary of an 81-pointer by the late Kobe Bryant, a player Embiid has long admired – was mere coincidence. That it came against a team featuring Victor Wembanyama, the celebrated rookie, would not appear to be.
Embiid argued otherwise when he finally wandered into the interview room at 10:58 p.m., well over an hour after the proceedings had concluded.
“It’s not like I just woke up one day and I was like, ‘OK, I gotta try to go out and dominate and have the best game of my career,’” he said. “You know, I’m trying to do it every single night, on both ends of the floor.”
His coach, Nick Nurse, has heard Embiid say that before, notably after his 41-point game last week against Denver’s Nikola Jokic. So while Nurse allowed that Embiid “certainly gets some motivation against certain guys or big nights or whatever,” that is the baseline from which he has been working.
Feel free to question his postseason success (or lack thereof), if you will. Feel free to question the fact that he has yet to take the Sixers beyond the second round of the playoffs. But do not question his place in the sport’s pantheon.
The 70-and-over club is headed by Wilt Chamberlain, who put up 100 for the Philadelphia Warriors against the Knicks on March 2, 1962, in Hershey, and exceeded 70 on five other occasions. The others to crest that total besides Bryant and Embiid were David Thompson, Devin Booker, David Robinson, Damian Lillard, Donovan Mitchell and Elgin Baylor.
Embiid shot 24-for-41 from the field, 1-for-2 from the 3-point arc and 21-for-23 from the foul line. He also collected 18 rebounds and five assists; according to the Elias Sports Bureau, no one had ever achieved those totals in a game before.
As the numbers were being fully crunched, the Sixers’ TV crew informed Embiid that Michael Jordan was the only other one to enjoy a 65/15/5 night.
“Wilt never did this?” Embiid asked his interviewers.
Nope, and during the three-plus seasons Wilt spent with the Sixers, he never scored more than 68. Embiid surpassed that when he took a pass from a teammate and trundled some 60 feet downcourt through the Spurs’ conscientious objectors before coaxing in a lefty layup with 1:41 left.
“To be in the same conversation (with Chamberlain), that’s pretty cool,” Embiid said.
Embiid raised his scoring average, already the best in the league for the third straight season, to 36.1. And earlier in the day hosts Sam Vecinie and Bryce Simon added further statistical context to his season on the “Game Theory” podcast. They noted that Embiid’s average of 49.8 points per 100 possessions is the best of all time, and added that Wilt – of course – was the only other player to average at least 35 points, 11 boards and five assists in a season. Chamberlain did that back in ‘63-64.
The pod hosts went on to say that Chamberlain’s true shooting percentage of 53.7 percent was 11 percent above league average that season, while Embiid is at 64.9 percent this year, 12 percent above league average. In their minds, at least, he is a lock to repeat as MVP, provided he can play 65 games, the league’s newly mandated threshold to qualify for postseason awards. Embiid has missed 10 of the Sixers’ 42 games to date, meaning that in order to remain eligible he can sit out no more than seven of the remaining 40.
Monday’s performance included 10 jumpers, six layups, four put-backs, two dunks, one hook shot and his lone triple, which came in the closing seconds of the third quarter and enabled him to match his previous career high of 59.
Wembanyama, for his part, called Embiid’s showing “inspiring.” The rookie had a nice night of his own, putting up 33, but defensively his pterodactyl-like reach – he’s listed at 7-3, which might be conservative – was no match for Embiid’s mid-range mastery. And Wemby, a spindly 230-pounder, is gonna need to ingest a Cinnabon or two if he hopes to stand up to Embiid when he chooses to play bully-ball.
“When he wants it and when he’s one-on-one,” Wembanyama said, “it’s very hard to stop him.”
The rookie nailed two 3-pointers and threw down a dunk off a lob from teammate Devin Vassell early in Monday’s game, and later converted a sweet left-handed finger roll in the post against Embiid. But Embiid in the meantime poured in 24 points in the first quarter, 34 in the first half and 25 more in the third quarter.
At that point the Sixers were up 104-89. Embiid took his customary rest, and there was some question as to whether he would have to return to the game.
“I’m always hoping we can give him the fourth (off),” Nurse said.
But Nurse brought his center back with 6:38 left and the lead just 12, at 118-106. Almost immediately Embiid made two free throws to establish a new career high of 61 and surpass Allen Iverson’s 60-point game (on Feb. 12, 2005) as the fourth-biggest scoring night in Sixers history. Still ahead were Wilt games of 62, 65 and 68.
Embiid methodically chipped away, and San Antonio was powerless to stop him. Wemby tried. Zach Collins tried. Jeremy Sochan tried. Various double-teamers tried. The Spurs even went zone on occasion, to no avail.
Embiid retired for the night with 1:22 left, to a thunderous ovation from the sellout crowd. After the final buzzer he met on the court with former Sixers coach Brett Brown, now a Spurs assistant and a man he holds in high regard. (Two other guys Brown coached in Philadelphia, Robert Covington and Furkan Korkmaz, joined in.)
“I’m kind of glad I did it in front of him,” Embiid said of Brown, “so he can kind of see the product of what he created.”
Embiid later expressed surprise that Towns didn’t eclipse his total, given the fact that the Minnesota forward scored 44 in the first half against Charlotte and finished the night with 10 3-pointers, albeit in a loss. (That result left Timberwolves coach Chris Finch, the Franklin & Marshall grad, steaming.)
Ultimately Embiid would have the night to himself. Ultimately he had renewed his dues to a very exclusive club, one in which he has long been a member in good standing.