Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Amid a tight MVP race, Embiid favors being best ahead of rest
PHILADELPHIA » In one week, the NBA will conclude a frenzied season. Immediately afterward, the list of the league’s statistical leaders will be printed and submitted for history. Joel Embiid, a strong candidate to be the 76ers’ sixth-ever MVP, may be listed among the top scorers and rebounders. Then again, if he does not play in at least 51 games, his spectacular individual season will be tangled in a technicality. The rules are clear: To be included among the league leaders, a player must appear in 70 percent of his team’s games.
As the Sixers reported to the Wells Fargo Center Saturday to face the rickety Detroit Pistons, Embiid had played in 48 of 67 games, 72 percent. But there was Doc Rivers, waiting for approval from his sports-science thinktank to play Embiid for the second time in 24 hours.
The idea: To deliver Embiid at full strength for a lengthy postseason push.
The side stakes: If Embiid doesn’t officially finish among the league leaders in scoring and rebounding, it will cost him status in a riveting MVP race.
And, oh, does Embiid want to be MVP, to taunt opposing centers with it and to validate his role in seven of the most unusual years in franchise history.
So, would Rivers insist that Embiid play in at least three of the Sixers’ final five games, just to give that MVP candidacy a push? Would he use his authority as a former worldchampion coach to help a player win an individual award, knowing it could spread positives around his locker room? Or would he be more committed to keeping his center fresh for the tournament?
“Honestly, I didn’t even know that was a rule,” Rivers said before the game. “So that tells you how focused I am on that part.”
Within the hour, though, someone gained that clarity, for in the sore end of a back-to-back against a team the Sixers were favored by double figures, it was announced: Of course, the ever-reliable Embiid would be in the starting lineup. Surprise? Rivers is contracted to drag a Larry O’Brien NBA Championship Trophy into Camden, not to enable Embiid to affix an MVP plaque to his mancave wall. But while the Sixers either will be deep into the playoffs or have been bounced too early from them by the time the MVP vote is shared, Rivers knows success of any sort is contagious. And since the Sixers haven’t had an MVP since Allen Iverson in 2001, and who haven’t won more than one playoff series since The Process began, any reason to celebrate has value.
“I think any individual award would be an achievement for everybody,” Rivers said. “No one does anything by themselves, right? I think it would be a feel-good thing for the entire locker room, and especially for Joel. It’s hard to get; only one guy gets it a year, right? But just for the team as a whole, I think it would be terrific.
“It would not only mean that we have the MVP, but that we have players. We have a team and we are a successful group.”
Typically, an MVP will play in at least 75 percent of the games. The 202021 season, played in something of a December-to-May rush, had its own dynamic, so the voters could take that into consideration. But even when Bill Walton won the 1977-78 award after playing in just 58 games, that was still 71 percent of the 82-game season.
After skipping an NBA TV showcase game in Milwaukee in a back-to-back hedge April 24, Embiid played the next seven, the Sixers winning them all. Though the competition was sketchy, it pole-vault Embiid over that 70-percent bar.
The Sixers have four games remaining, including a back-to-back Thursday in Miami and at home Friday against Orlando. By then, they should have clinched the No. 1 seed throughout the Eastern Conference playoffs. Embiid can miss two more games and still rank among the official league leaders at season’s end.
Would that make him the MVP? Not necessarily. Las Vegas still has Denver’s Nikola Jokic firmly at the top of its MVP wagering boards, and those wise guys don’t often miss by much.
But Jokic and Steph Curry could split the Western Conference vote, allowing an Eastern Conference candidate to win. Or maybe Jokic and Embiid split the vote for centers, clearing the way for Giannis Antetokounmpo.
In such a tight race, winning should help. And the Sixers have had a splendid season. But Embiid knows that if he wants to win the official right to tell everyone how much he “dominates” professional basketball, his name should be listed among the league leaders.
To do that, he must play. So Saturday, he did, under the kind of circumstances that typically would have had him scratched. Ben Simmons and Seth Curry took the night off instead.
“Listen, it’s something we talked about this summer,” Rivers said. “For us to be great, Joel is going to have to be great. He’s going to have to play as many games as possible that will allow him to be in the playoffs healthy. Unfortunately for him, an injury took him out, or he would have played in more games. So it goes down to his conditioning and his mental preparation. And I’m very proud of him.”
That pride will grow if Embiid wins the MVP award at the wire. Behind gusts of “MVP, MVP” chants, he is charging down the stretch. He can rest later.