I keep hearing that NBA MVP is a regular-season honor. That’s odd, because when so many people ran out of ways to discount Nikola Jokic’s so-called nerd dominance in order to boost Joel Embiid’s case, the argument turned to… the postseason.
It was always there. This notion that Jokic is somehow not the dominant force in the postseason. It has never met the basic standard of a logical argument. Check out Jokic’s post-season performances. And besides, Embiid is some kind of playoff monster? After Embiid’s Sixers were sent off by the Celtics in Game 7 on Sunday, Philly are now out in the second round for the third straight season, and in an increasingly embarrassing way, I might add.
To be clear: Jokic has now taken part in two conference finals. Emboid, zero. We put the blame on Ben Simmons in 2021. James Harden wasn’t healthy last year. I’m sure Embiid’s apologists will claim this year that he is unhealthy. which he wasn’t. But that is not the point. This is now a pattern. Embiid does not consistently master the moments in front of him. Last year he reached 7 to 24 in the Philly playoff. On Sunday he reached 5 to 18 and 15 points.
On the defensive, which as a more valuable player than Jokic should be the core of his thing, he basically offered no edge protection and had no chance to defend on the touchline. He was repeatedly attacked while doing pick and roll drills. He was slow and had no buoyancy. He was lethargic. To be fair, Embiid always looks rather lethargic. But on Sunday he was really out for a leisurely stroll. In a game 7.
Now I want to be clear that this is not an attack on Embiid as a great player, which he obviously is. I’m just here to point out what’s totally obvious to anyone who’s seriously watching and has seriously watched these two guys play: Embiid isn’t in Jokic’s class. He just isn’t. There’s no one-size-fits-all number to suggest it is, and for those folks who hate metrics, the eye test just looked pretty amazing.
When Embiid is doing well, it’s easy to mistake him for an equal, if not superior, to Jokic, just as it’s easy to put Damian Lillard in Stephen Curry’s class when he’s cooking. I made the mistake myself. And I looked stupid when I did it.
I won’t be fooled again. Like Lillard, Embiid is a Hall of Famer and MVP worthy candidate. He’s just not the MVP. He’s not the curry in this conversation. That’s funny. The guy whose on-off splits should have told the MVP story for the third straight year.
It’s worth repeating: the Nuggets were 25 points worse per 100 possessions when Jokic was sitting this season. That’s a statistical way of saying they played like the best team in the league with him and pretty much the worst team without him. This is the case with a large sample.
But I won’t even go into advanced numbers here. According to Cleaning the Glass, the Nuggets are down 2.2 per 100 in this playoff with Jokic on the bottom. Doesn’t matter. It’s a small sample. The man averaged 34.5 points, 13.2 rebounds and 10.3 assists with 59/44/85 shot splits in the elimination of the Suns. He was without a doubt the best player on a series that included Kevin Durant and Devin Booker.
See what the numbers reflect, but what you don’t necessarily need to understand by watching the games is this: Jokic is a guaranteed good shot. For him. Or for a teammate. The Nuggets direct their offense through him and they cannot be defended. Can not. If you individually cover Jokic, whether it’s in the regular season or the playoffs, he’ll destroy you at the post or with his feathery touch. Cover him twice and he’ll cut you wide open with his passing.
This defensive dilemma cannot be duplicated by Embiid. You can double-team with him and he won’t tear you apart; He finished the playoffs with 24 assists and 35 turnovers. It’s fair to say that MVP is a regular season award, but nothing speaks of Jokic’s worth more than his ability to beat doubles teams, and Embiid can’t do that in the regular season or the playoffs.
Embiid is a reliable mid-range marksman, but spends too much time in perimeters. On Sunday he was way too far from the basket. Sometimes he catches the ball just inside the 3-point line. If he has to push you back that far, he risks losing the ball and/or his stance, or both, unless he just flips on his head and settles for a knight.
While there’s absolutely no way a defense can keep Jokic, who just has too many opportunities to kill you, to 15 points, 18 shots and an assist in an elimination game or really any other game, Embiid is like his teammate James Harden relies too much on drawing fouls to maintain consistent half-court dominance when things get really tight.
Six times in his career, Embiid has made the playoffs and five times he has not even reached the league average in effective field goal percentage. If he doesn’t get to the finish line, he’s not dominant. At least not like Jokic.
The playoffs are about which teams get the better, easier, and more rhythmic shots against seeded defences. Jokic guarantees you these recordings. Emboid not. The game looks like a fight going through Embiid compared to Jokic.
This is harder to see in the regular season, when there are countless duels against inferior opponents and nobody develops concrete strategies. But it’s still true. It’s still a huge advantage for Jokic.
This has been a problem for the Sixers since the Brett Brown era. You just can’t get good, consistent shots in the half-court. It’s been seen all day on Sunday – nothing happening, Embiid is backing away or looking up, the shot clock seems to have stopped at six seconds and is ticking down as someone tries to create something out of nothing.
They said Brown wasn’t creative enough and he fled. Simmons fails to make room on the floor and he was run out. Doc Rivers has long been vilified – rightly so, in my opinion – as an unimaginative, frankly overwhelmed coach in the playoffs, and he may soon be gone too. Harden could be done in Philly, and don’t tell me he’s an unreliable shooter unless he can make a living off the whistle all the time.
Embiid is Philadelphia’s only franchise pillar guaranteed to last into next season, and at some point you have to wonder who the common denominator is for all of these postseason flaws. And with that said, it’s only logical to conclude that the postseason narrative – which isn’t supposed to mean anything, but we all know it actually means something – in relation to this Jokic vs. Embiid debate doesn’t is valid.
The simple truth is that Jokic lost that award due to voter fatigue. And to the narration of a great player in Embiid who was waiting for his turn. Jokic was better in the regular season. Jokic was better in the postseason. Jokic is the league’s most valuable player, regardless of who actually won the trophy this year. I don’t know who needs to hear this. But I just wanted to say it.