hardenASG13 wrote:iggymcfrack wrote:Decipher wrote:Embiid cops a lot of flak for his playing style but there’s no denying his importance to the Sixers as they’re barely a playin team without him
Point differential when their star sitsPhilly without Embiid: +2.6
Mavericks w/o Luka: +1.0
Bucks without Giannis: -0.3
Thunder without SGA: -2.7
Nuggets without Jokic: -8.4
So is he ducking games to boost his stats and win MVP like many are arguing, while also knowing missing games will take him out of the MVP running? Because that makes no sense.
The stats you post clearly reflect garbage time for Philly, as they have lost 7 of 9 without him and don’t have a positive point differential at all for that sample. It’d be impossible to have one and lose 7 of 9 games.
Mostly, they reflect regular minutes with Embiid on the bench. Obviously if you take out the superstar entirely for the game, the point differential is going to be worse because inferior players play more minutes than during the normal rotation patterns.
What we can infer so far is that the 76ers handle the minutes with Embiid on the bench pretty well, but they do not handle missing Embiid for entire games very well (with the caveat that it's still a rather small sample and the schedule has been comparatively difficult). How well other teams handle missing their star player for entire games this season is something we don't really know, and hence cannot compare, because they haven't missed significant time unlike Embiid.
I also don't subscribe to the idea that Embiid is ‘ducking games’, that is, deciding to sit against difficult match-ups and suit up against easier match-ups. That doesn't make sense to me, especially not when it comes to the most recent stretch. That being said, that does not mean that we shouldn't be aware that Embiid has been disproportionately missing tough games when looking at his performances compared to other candidates as well as the 76ers team performance without him.
