Hoops Tonight - Top 25 Players in the NBA Joel Embiid is the BEST scorer in the NBA

place that you guys can get these shows. We are continuing our player rankings today with number five the reigning League MVP, Joel m beat probably as big a chasm between what his regular season dominance has looked like and his playoff success has looked like, which makes them very polarizing and very difficult to rank, But we're gonna get into all of the details of that today. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of

our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore Jason Lts, you guys don't miss any show announcements. And last but not least, for whatever reason, you guys miss one of these videos and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish, don't forget you can find them wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops tonight, and I'm very excited to tell you guys about our new sponsor. If you guys work and live a similar lifestyle to my wife and I, it can be really difficult to eat right.

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of it. I've told you guys about this before, but when I made my list, when I first made the twenty five to one, I was really hesitant at the back end of the twenty five, like right in that like twenty four to twenty five spot, and I spent about two days kind of going back and forth about which guys I wanted to go with there. Once I kind of set that, though twenty five through eleven was

pretty much set for me. I knew Devin Booker and Kawhi were gonna be at the bottom of my superstar tier, but from ten to one, even during the weeks the week when I was working on twenty five to eleven in our videos, I was so all over the place, and Embiid in particular, was one of the biggest guys that moved around. The very first version of this list that I made, I had him be down at ten, in large part because he's not my favorite player, probably the player that I dislike the most out of the

top twelve superstars in the league. So I knew I was fighting a lot of negative bias on my end. Obviously, you guys know how I feel about the playoffs. But then I'd sit there and I'd be like, I'd remember this season, and I'd remember the competitiveness that he approached it with from start to finish, and while everyone else was kind of working their way through it, Embiid was

just attacking everybody night in and night out. It seemed like he was hell bent on demonstrating to the world that he was the best basketball player, and honestly, within the regular season context, he did that as if you guys remember, I even at one point put him as I've always been a guy who viewed Yokic is better than Embiid. But there was a point there about two thirds through the season where I was like, man, em

Bead's playing better than him. Right now, I think he might be better, And so I tried to remember what that was like. And so then I'd come back around and I'd have him a pie on the list, and then I'd sleep on it, and i'd wake up the

next morning and I'd be like, noh, screw that. He doesn't deserve any higher than ten, And then like cause it was so polarizing because it's as big a difference, like I said in the intro, between what his peak is in regular season production and what his playoff success has actually been. In reality, that gap has been wider than any of these stars over the course of the last few years. I mean, he's kind of become the

new James Harden in a lot of ways. James Harden has just diminished too much to really be in that conversation. But he's just wildly polarizing in that sense. And so when I think about the good with Embid, I'm incentivized to put him up higher, and when I think about the bad, I'm incentivized to put him lower. And so I was all over the place, and I'll give you, guys really quickly my cases for both. So my reasoning for putting him down at ten was, he's the biggest

playoff underperformer from this era. His back to back seasons where he led the league in scoring and then couldn't crack twenty four points per game in the postseason, and then his defensive effectiveness goes down a level in the postseason as well. You guys might remember last year the Toronto Rafts kind of cooking him on the perimeter a little bit, and then this year in that Game seven against Boston, Jason Tatum just picking on him on switches,

pulling him out to the perimeter and barbecuing him. So that was part of it. The second part of it is he's easily my least favorite player in that top twelve. Like I said earlier, I find the flopping that he does to just be completely embarrassing and really dangerous, and it's just something that I don't really like about Joel Embiid as a bassall players. That was kind of where

I was leaning towards ten. The reasoning for five was I really think Joel went up a big level in this last season, his shot making was off the charts. We'll go over that here in a little bit when I go through his season recap. But they were un unfathomably good. He anchored one of the best defenses in the league. The Sixers actually finished eighth in defensive rating, but they were much much better with embat off the

floor than off. There was a massive drop off like five six points per one hundred possessions when Embiid went to the bench defensively, and I thought, honestly, within the actual skill set stuff, I thought Embiid had figured out some stuff that would help him in the playoffs. He was quicker and more decisive in his post ups and ISOs, he was more aggressive to the basket. His overall field goal percentages were higher than they've been in a very

very long time, or really ever in his career. And he had become a truly great mid range jump shooter. And if you guys remember, throughout the season, I kept saying that mid range jump shot is going to be the key to him being successful in the playoffs, and he was making them at a higher clip than he had ever had. We'll talk about what actually happened in a little bit but I ended up going with the ranking and beat at five instead of ranking him at ten.

And there were three reasons for that. One, like I said earlier, really impressed by his overall competitiveness. He wanted to kick everyone's ass and he basically did. Did he really want to win MVP? Was he campaigning for it? Yeah, but it's a lot easier said than done, and he actually went out and did it, and I thought he deserved MVP, especially with the way that Yannis and Jokic

tailed off towards the end of the year. The second reason, I do think injuries have played a very big role in his playoff struggles, above and beyond the stuff that has to do with his actual approach and how that is limited in the playoffs, which we'll talk about in a little bit. Last year, if you guys remember, before he broke his face, he was pretty damn good in the Raptor series. Twenty six points and eleven rebounds per game, sixty two percent true shooting. Lit him on fire in

the closeout game. If you remember, in Game three in Toronto, he hits the game winner, the buzzer to put him up three to zero. He was awesome in that series against a very very good Raptors team. I was crazy and stupid enough to pick the Raptors to win that series. So obviously, like there was a little bit of a level that he went up, and then he just was hurt. He had a broken face, which clearly affected him in that Miami Heat series, and then this year he just

had a bad knee. And again that doesn't completely justify the struggles. We'll get into some of the specific things he does that hurts him in that stage, but that does help explain things a little bit. And last, but not least, and beats playoff struggles are still in the last two seasons twenty four points, ten rebounds per game, fifty eight percent true shooting with two blocks, So even his like diminished playoff version, is still a very very

very good playoff basketball player. And then three, the last reason why I decided to go with em beat at five. Now that he has won himself an MVP, I think that Joel Embiid is going to start trying to pace himself through the regular season more. A big part of why he pushed himself so hard the last two years was his relentless pursuits of that pursuit of that MVP award, and so I think it's more likely than ever that

he'll be healthy for the postseason in this year. So kind of insummation considering how close all these guys are, and that's been the theme of this entire list. But the gap between Luka Doncic at ten and the guy that I have tomorrow at four is extremely small. You could make a case for Luca at four. You can make a case for the other guy at ten. You can make a case for Embiad at five or ten.

You could put Lebron fans still think he's top five, right, Anthony Davis said his very best might be better than all those guys. Man, that is worse. He's worse than

all those guys. So the gap is incredibly small between all those guys, And as kind of like a tiebreaker for me, I wanted to reward Joel Embiid and give him credit for attacking the regular season the way he did the last couple of seasons, the improvements that he's made, becoming basically the best volume score in the league on incredible efficiency, and then winning the league MVP Award, which, even though it doesn't mean as much which as it used to I think, should still mean something so kind

of like the tie went to the MVP is basically a very very short way to put it. As I put Joel Embiid at number five and be led the league in scoring for the second consecutive season. This is your little season recap here. Thirty three points, ten rebounds, and forces sixty six percent sure shooting, led the league in scoring and was off the charts efficient. You guys, remember the year James Harden averaged thirty six points per game.

That was back in twenty nineteen. He did that on just sixty two percent turre shooting, which is also excellent. But that just goes to show you the gap in efficiency between the volume in efficiency between what Joel Embid accomplished this season in the recent big volume scoring seasons that we've had. It's arguably the most impressive scoring volume inefficiency season in this era of NBA basketball. And again, he was actually making shots. This was not just grifting

fifty five percent on field goals. To give you some perspective, James Harden was forty four percent on field goals in that twenty nineteen season, was way more dependent on long distance shot result in that season. The shot making numbers across the board. Fifty four percent effective field goal percentage on catching shoot jumpers. That's awesome. Forty six percent effective

field goal percentage on pull up jumpers. That's really good for a guard, but it's like off the charts good for a big fifty two percent on floaters, fifty eight percent on hooks, four point eight restricted area makes per game that was seventh in the entire NBA shot seventy five percent there so again not like the same level that Jokic was at the postseason this year, which again

was like truly transcendent. We're going to get to that point when we get to Jokic, But considering the sheer volume of scoring that Joel Embiid was doing in this regular season, this was unbelievable efficiency across the board. The one week spot really was the three point line. He was just thirty three percent, but he was fifty six percent effective field goal percentage on unguarded catch and shoot jumpers, which I think qualifies him easily as a legitimate floor spacing.

Big play type data super deadly in ISO and post up situations, one point one to six points per ISO on huge volume. Among the twenty five players to log at least two hundred and fifty ISOs this year, Joel Embiid ranked second in efficiency, shot over fifty percent in shots out of ISO situations. He was also one point one to eight points per post up Among the twenty players to run at least two hundred post ups. Last year, Embiad ranked third inefficiency, shot fifty four percent on field

goals out of the post. The main driving force between Embiad's ISO and POST success is just that deadly shot there in that ten to fifteen foot range that he can hit off of a jab step off the catch off of a quick one or two dribble combination. And then also he's very good at ripping through the baseline and using his size and a power dribble to dislodge the big who tries to close him off from the baseline to get back underneath the basket and make a

little shot off the glass or dunk. It's that classic push and pull. Where as the defender guarding Joel Embiid you have to worry about the shot and the drive, and quite frankly, there's just not a lot of bigs in the league that are used to guarding players like that, because there just aren't that many bigs in the league that have a really dependable jump shot that make him have to be guarded at that specific spot on the floor. Joel Ebid was also the very best role man in

the NBA last year. He totaled five hundred and forty one points on role possessions, which was one hundred and twenty points more than second place in the league. Who wants to take a guess as to who was second in the league. If you guessed Nikola Vucevich, you were correct. He was effected both rolling and popping on the role. He's just so damn big that when he would catch with his momentum going towards the basket, you basically couldn't

stop him without fouling. He shot sixty eight percent on rolls to the basket, the short roll to the foul and this was kind of like the bread and butter of the Harden and Bad two man game. If Harden was kind of going more laterally and the big was up high, it was more of like a pocket pass to the foul line. If Harden actually got downhill a little bit, it was more of like a pop back

to the foul line. But that was basically one of the really efficient ways for the Sixers to set up Joel Embiid for quick face up ISOs at the foul line before the defense could really get set and he was just deadly shooting in those situations. Joel Ebiad shot a fifty seven percent effective field goal percentage on jumpers in those pick and pop situations. Think about that, So like you had to close out at him, which is what opened up everything else as he was ripping through

to the basket. That was just a deadly action for the Sixers all year long, that Joel Embiid short roll slash pop to the top of the key where he could run a quick ISO. But injury or not, Embiid's effectiveness went down a huge level in the playoffs. Again, his post up and ISO efficiency dropped from one point one to seven points per possession in the regular season to just one point zero two points per possession in

the postseason. Now again still over a point per possession. So, like I was talking about earlier, even the diminished version of Embid is still a very good playoff basketball player over a point for over a point per possession and play types in the postseason, in the half court against the set defense with everyone looking at you, in my opinion,

is still very, very valuable. But the biggest driver for why he had issues and why there was that big, you know, fifteen point per one hundred possession drop off, was his jumper just completely failed him. I talked all season about whether or not he'd be able to make those jumpers when he got to the postseason, and he just didn't. Now, was it probably the injury most likely? Yeah, I talk about this all the time on the show.

But energy transfer any sort of jump shot, especially on any sort of movement, even if it's a jab step, even if it's just a simple dribble combination, any sort of jumper off of movement is about transferring energy from the floor from your feet up, through your knees, through your hips, through your back, through your arms through the shot. And if there's a disruption in that power line, it

throws off the entire muscle memory of it. And so if he wasn't getting the same amount of lift out of his knee because his knee was hurt and all of a sudden, puts more of the onus on the wrist, which is a different muscle memory than he's been working on all season. I do think that did have a factor to play in what happened to Joel Embiid in his jump shot. But the numbers, guys, they were not pretty.

Joel embiid effective field goal percentage on jump shots in this postseason twenty nine point seven percent effective field goal percentage that's weighted for threes at is twenty percent below his regular season efficiency on those shots. To give you an idea just how bad that affected him, on how

significantly that affected him. If he just hit his normal percentages on jumpers in this postseason, he'd been up at twenty six points per game in that playoff run, and his volume was way down because he lost confidence in the shot. During the regular season, he took about nine jumpers per game this year in the postseason, he took barely over six. So he took about fifty percent fewer, about thirty three percent fewer jump shots during the playoffs,

just because he didn't trust it anymore. So the jumper failing was the big reason why his scoring went down. There was also a slight decrease in free throw attempts, but that's always going to happen to everybody, went from like I think, almost twelve to about nine. Defensively, same issue that plagued him at time in the Times in the Toronto series, like I talked about just inability to

guard quicker wings on the perimeter. All I'll say about that is that's certainly an issue, but it's not what I want to dwell on because it's not something he has control over. He's just with his body type, He's never gonna be able to guard quick wings on the perimeter. Guess who else can't do that, Nicole Jokis, and he's

the best player in the world. So to me, it's more about him rounding out his strengths so that they're dependable in the playoffs, not worrying so much about his weaknesses that are that he's never going to be able to address. But the reality is, as we look back on this phase of Joel Embid's career, the playoff struggles are becoming a significant part of Joelle's story. Unfortunately, it's

just a reality. He's a full three point two points per game lower than the playoffs compared to his regular season production, and a full three point two percent lower in true shooting percentage. You know, it kind of reminds me of the gap we talked about in shooting percentages in the Jimmy Butler video. If you guys go back to our number nine Jimmy Butler video. I did like a ten minute segment on just why I use different shooting percentages, why I use them in different specific conversations,

and what they mean. And one of the things I talked about is players that have an extremely large gap between their true shooting percentage and their field goal percentage tend to have more significant variance in the playoffs. Why because that means inherently that they rely more on long distance jump shooting and on getting a favorable whistle from the officials. Joel Embiid has an eleven percent gap this regular season between his field goal percentage and his true

shooting percentage. That means he does rely on long distance shot result in free throw attempts even more than what his percentages demonstrate because he relies on a lot of mid range jump shots, which failed him in this playoff run. So it's one of those things where like just in general, as long as he relies on his jump shot as much as he does, if he's not gonna make him.

It's gonna be a problem. So he either needs to get to the point where he can make that shot in the playoffs consistently, or he needs to reconfigure his shot profile to more of a power game that he can rely on in that stage. Obviously, playmaking continues to be an issue for Joel Ebid. He just really struggles to handle aggressive defensive schemes. He's okay with really basic double team. So like if he's on the left block and he's facing the basket with the ball in his

right hand, and the double comes towards his face. This is something I noticed all season last year. If the double come towards it comes towards his face, he sees it coming, he sees the raid, he makes the read. But any sort of convoluted defensive approach, whether that's a double that comes from behind him on the baseline, whether that is a you know, a stunt, somebody just reaching in and then recovering really quick, playing in the gaps, Guys trying to bait him into a pass that isn't

really there. One of the big ones he all season two is anytime he turned his back, So like if you made a counter move, a behind the back dribble, a spin move of any kind. The guy who's behind him would jump in and try to take the ball away. The Celtics in particular were really good at taking advantage of Joel and b when he would turn his back. He just really really struggles with all of that stuff, and it's bad to a level that I think goes above and beyond what people even are aware of. Here's

a crazy stat for you. Joel Embiid in his career has forty five more turnovers than assists in the playoffs. Forty five more turnovers than assists in the playoffs. But as is the case with most players, that when it comes to playmaking, that's something you're born with. It's not something you can really develop. You can get a little better at it over time, and there are a couple of outliers, guys like Kawhi Leonard, but for the most part, it's like it's a natural gift. Do you either have

it or you don't. And there are peers in the NBA that struggle with it that still have success. Anthony Davis, for instance, has nearly as many playoff turnovers as assists. So to me, again like I talked about earlier, Like with the defense thing, it's less about him be figuring that out and just making sure his strengths actually come

to the table in that setting. Because if Joel Embiid is thirty plus points per game on outrageous efficiency and one point two points per possession on play types in the postseason, no one's going to care if he gets beat off the dribble a few times per game, and no one's going to care if he turns the ball

over three or four times a game. But as soon as the scoring goes down from thirty plus points per game to twenty four and the efficiency craters and the play type efficiency craters, suddenly the inability to guard on the perimeter and the issues that he has turning the basketball over become a bigger problem. So really, that to me is the direction he needs to go really work on refining his strengths to the point where they work in the playoffs. So what can Joellen be do to

reverse the trend of his playoff decline? I put down three things. One flopping, you're not getting the calls not in the playoffs. Your free throws go down in that setting, really the only time you're getting calls in the playoffs are when people actually value and most of those times you're not actually flopping, So it's a waste. It's a

waste of your energy. It's completely embarrassing to watch. It's not a good look to see the biggest player on the floor just like literally throwing himself down on the ground. It's embarrassing. And then lastly, it's dangerous, not just for Joel Embid flopping and landing on parts of his body, but running into other people. I mean, like again, I don't think he did it on purpose, but there was a Joel embiid flop that led to Danny Green tearing up his knee. It's a dangerous thing for a player

that large to be falling all over the floor. Number Two, he needs to develop the power game to the point where he can audible away from the jump shot to a power game when his jump shot fails him. But lastly, he needs to figure out the conditioning and health to get to the point where his jump shot actually translates to the playoffs. I think it's a combination of him getting banged up in the increase in physicality that causes

his jump shot efficiency to tank. So he's got to figure out a way to navigate the regular season and make it to April healthy. And he's got to figure out a way to improve his conditioning so that he can handle that increased physicality when he gets to that point. The touch is there. He's a great shooter. The numbers are too good. If you go back and look, he's got like three seasons in the last four where he's over forty seven percent effective field goal percentage in jump shots.

This season fifty four percent. There was a season I think three or four years ago where he was fifty two percent. He's a very good jump shooter. He just has to figure out a way to get it to translate to the playoffs. So in summery. Joel Embiid, in my opinion, has been one of the three best regular season players in the league over the course of this particular decade. He's been the best volume score in the

league for about three years now. He does it on an incredibly efficient clip, and he's an excellent rim protector anchoring an excellent defense. That makes him, like I said before, one of the three best regular season players of the twenty twenties. But some combination of his injury luck and his offensive approach have led to him having a significant redunction of reduction and effectiveness when he gets to the postseason.

It's got to figure that out. If he does, if he learns how to manage the grind of the NBA season and he gets to the point where he can play at his peak in the postseason, I think he is capable of challenging Nikola Jokic as the best player in the league. That is the type of talent that he has. His ceiling is that high. We've seen it time and time again in the regular season. He's just got to figure out how to get it to translate. All right, guys, that is all I have for today.

We'll be back tomorrow with number four. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys, and I will see you that the volume