Embiid’s MVP shot about to fall short

The 90-foot shot from Joel Embiid, a potential horn-beating throw at history, collided into the backboard, double-doinked just inside the rim and, in an eerie instant, sprung out and spilled to the floor.

It’s been that kind of justmissed career for the best player, skill for skill, ever to wear a red, white, blue, black or cream 76ers uniform. And it is about to wind up that kind of year for a great player who needed every late-season boost to win his first MVP plaque.

While no one shot will define a basketball season, the athletic gem Embiid uncorked with eight-tenths of a second left in a three-point loss to visiting Phoenix would have provided a valuable campaign boost. Had it fallen and forced overtime, it would have elevated Embiid’s season from phenomenal to legendary. For days, it would have been replayed on national sports-talk TV shows, the enlightened concluding that, in this particular season, Embiid has been the embodiment of basketball magic.

Embiid has never had, nor is likely ever to have, a better season. Relatively healthy by his standards, 27 years old and in his prime, he is averaging 30 points and 11 rebounds, protects the rim with authority and is a 37.5-percent three

point shooter.

He must be in the MVP conversation. Problem is, there is no MVP Conversation award.

“Joel Embiid is so gifted,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “It’s really incredible. It’s like watching one of the great centers from the ‘80s or ‘90s, only with the added dimension of the skill set of the modern-day player, with the one-legged shots and the fadeaways and the Euros and all the stuff that the modern player has worked on.

“He’s really a unique force in the league today.”

Embiid’s problem is that he is having a signature season at the same time as another center, Nikola Jokic, who is averaging 26.3 points for the Denver Nuggets. And Jokic does something that Embiid apparently never will. He plays on a regular basis. When asked to catalog Jokic’s 2021 highlights, Denver coach Michael Malone recently said, “He’s had 56 of them.” That’s how many games Jokic, who does not require load management, had played at the time. By contrast, Embiid has missed 19 games either for rest, for an achy back, for a bruised knee and other reasons, enough to cost him valuable voting support.

Even Doc Rivers, who rightly endorsed Embiid for the award, said Jokic would be his second MVP choice. Yet by Saturday, Rivers was so unbothered by Embiid’s sinking hopes that he calmly took his training staff’s advice to scratch from a marquee ESPN game in Milwaukee that was certain to captivate the electorate. Shoulder injury this time.

The Sixers would lose, 132-94, running a late-season losing streak for four. Two days earlier, Rivers admitted he did not want to employ Embiid defensively against MVP candidate Giannis Antetokounmpo, who scored 27 points in that 124-117 Milwaukee victory.

So Embiid plays one game, doesn’t match up against the opposing MVP candidate, doesn’t play in the next game, and the Sixers lose twice to an Eastern Conference contender.

Is that any way to win an MVP award?

That lack of durability and reliability, evident since he was in college, is about to cost Embiid the MVP trophy in a crowded photo finish. Saturday, at a meaningful regular-season moment, Rivers didn’t even question the trainers’ orders to start someone else.

That someone else was Mike Scott. A 38-point loss ensued. And there were the Sixers afterward, just a game ahead of the third-place Bucks in the loss column.

Owning the national TV stage, Antetokounmpo would go for 24 and 14.

“I didn’t ask Joel one question about his injury today,” Rivers said. “The trainers came in. In most cases, if it’s a playoff game, most guys will play. It’s a big difference between playoff games and regular-season games. We absolutely understand that.”

One game before Embiid’s full-court heave fell short against Phoenix, the Sixers were buried beneath 49 points from Steph Curry in a loss to Golden State. Curry is having one of his most impressive seasons at age 33, and is firmly in the MVP race with Jokic, Embiid and Antetokounmpo.

Late in that Wells Fargo Center classic, both Embiid and Curry were serenaded by “MVP, MVP” chants, making it difficult to tell that the Sixers were the home team.

That split Wells Fargo Center vote shouted that Curry could win the race that Embiid once had a chance to commandeer.

But playing helps, not that Embiid always bothers.

And winning helps, not that the Sixers were able to do that in four telling games.

So at the point of the season when the awards are earned, Embiid’s best throw at an MVP plaque is about to rim out and crash.