Hypothetical: Would Joel Embiid be the greatest player of his generation if he were healthy?

[GeorgeSears]

Playing 80 games vs. 60 is different. Even if you don't sprain your knee or tweak your back, that's an incredible grind and his numbers would surely taper off and might not be as good as they are when he only plays 60 games... unless you're also assuming he'll never get tired.

[levon]

No objectively, and also, **** him.

[lessthanjake]

Maybe. But I’d still have a lot of concerns. A few of them, in no particular order:

1. He plays a style of basketball that focuses a lot on high FT volume, and that is a style of play that historically doesn’t translate well in the playoffs, where FTs aren’t called as easily. Embiid is also just a giant human being that, even leaving aside injury/health issues, is never going to have huge stamina. That becomes a bigger deal in the playoffs, when the intensity gets higher, the game gets more tiring, and superstar minutes go up. So I think our baseline assumption should be that Embiid would always be a playoff dropper to a somewhat significant degree. Of course, perhaps a healthy Embiid would be such a great regular season player that even dropping in the playoffs would leave him incredibly good, but this does give me pause.

2. It’s not actually completely clear to me that Embiid would get all the foul calls he get if he were healthy. IMO, refs do give an easy whistle to Joel in general, compared to what a lot of other huge and dominant big men have gotten. I do think there’s an element of that that is the league trying to protect Joel from injury—he’s a major star and it’s better for the NBA if he’s healthy, so there’s reason for them to try to disincentivize rough and physical play with Embiid. If he were a healthy player in general, I think he’d lose that kid-glove treatment and probably get called like most healthy dominant big men (i.e. they’re allowed to be mauled a lot without fouls), which would likely somewhat mitigate the positive effect of being healthy. I will note that this issue actually overlaps with point #1 above, in that if a healthy Embiid got less foul calls then he’d also be less reliant on foul calls and therefore less likely to be a playoff dropper.

3. I have concerns about Embiid’s mentality. We don’t have a complete window into someone, nor are we around them all the time, so I say this with a real grain of salt. But Embiid seems very quick to feel sorry for himself and to make excuses. I don’t think that’s the ideal mentality for a player to overcome adversity (which will always come in some way) or to lead others. Of course, some of feeling sorry for himself is precisely because of all the injuries, which must be genuinely extremely frustrating. But I think there’s more to it than that. And I do feel like some of this is having his NBA upbringing be on a team that was actively trying to lose for the first several years he was there. It was an organization that did not incentivize people to be accountable and, quite the opposite, basically wanted any excuse to have players not play or not play hard. I don’t think that helped Embiid’s mentality as a player, and I think he’d probably have a better mentality now if he’d been drafted by a different organization.

4. As with any player with perpetual health issues, we do have to ask ourselves whether the things that make him great are also in part the things that give him health issues. Like, Embiid is a massive human being. His size and power is a huge part of what makes him such a good player. But players of his size are also very injury-prone because there’s just a lot of weight being put on various parts of their bodies (knees, feet, etc.). Could someone have all the things about Embiid physically that makes him great, without having there be health issues? If we are positing an Embiid with no health issues, does that mean we’re also toning down his size or something in order to take those health issues away? And, if so, how much less good does that make him?

Ultimately, though, these aren’t necessarily dispositive concerns. Maybe it is possible to have the good parts of Embiid’s body while being totally healthy. And if Embiid were a totally healthy player, maybe he would get less foul calls and be a bit of a playoff dropper, but also just be so great that that wouldn’t stop him from having huge team success in the playoffs. And maybe without injuries and with team success, he’d have developed a totally different mentality. In that case, I think the talent is there for him to have potentially been the best player of his generation.

Once again he was leading the league in FT attempts this post season.

A lot of the mentality stuff as I mentioned is tied to his injuries as you said, this is if he were not hurt. Show me a mopey EMbiid when he's healthy?

#3 is probably the closest thing to be true. His style is what gets him hurt definitely has value. However many of his injuries were freak, 2 orbital bone fractures (Fultz smashing his shoulder into his eyesocket on a screen,and Pascal's elbow on a drive to the rim, 2 meniscus tears (Kuminga landing on his leg when he's on the floor), torn finger ligament on a dunk, and Bell's Palsy. He's likely the most unlucky star in the history of the NBA with regards to injuries.

On the FT part, in the last four seasons (when he’s really been up there as potentially the best player in the league), he has averaged 17.0 FTA per 100 possessions in the regular season, and 13.9 FTA per 100 possessions in the playoffs. Obviously playoff basketball isn’t a large sample size, so that could just be randomness, but I’m inclined to think it’s reflecting something real, given that we know playoff basketball is officiated a bit differently (and we see similar decreases for other FT-focused guys like Harden). Also, as I mentioned, I think an Embiid without injury issues would just get a lot fewer FT calls in general.

I do agree that being healthy would help his mentality, but I still question it, because I just don’t like what I’ve seen from him even leaving aside understandable frustration over injuries. Maybe if we had him start on a different team from the Sixers and made him a healthy player things would be different. It’s possible! But it is definitely a concern, because what we’ve seen in reality is not the mentality of a good leader IMO, and that is an important thing for team success in basketball. He’d probably have to be different in this hypothetical to be the generation’s greatest player, and I’m concerned (though not certain) that he wouldn’t have enough of a different mentality.

And yeah, it’s true he’s had some freak injuries. The vast majority of those ones don’t strike me as things relating to him just being a massive human being or even particularly to his playing style. But there’s also been injuries that definitely seem related to his body and playing style. If we are positing that he is fully healthy, then we are positing that those injuries don’t happen either, and I’m not sure that that’s actually possible if we hold his body and playing style constant. Maybe they are, but it’s a real question IMO.

[CodeBreaker]

greatest *crybaby of this generation

[Cubbies2120]

No case for best player because that’s Jokic. However there’s a legitimate case to be made that he’s the dirtiest player of this generation. Correct me if I’m wrong, he has a flagrant foul rate that’s 2x as frequent as Draymond Green?

[maxpower8888]

Injury or not, Jokic is the better player.

[Woodsanity]

Brunson>Embiid.

[Sweet Serenity]

Absolutely no shame from Eyatoma

[canada_dry]

Too much of a playoff dropper. Healthy or not.

Can't be the player of the generation when that's the case.

Sent from my SM-G960W using RealGM mobile app

[dygaction]

Right time to have a thread to go parallel with Joker's MVP announcement

[KayDee35]

He's in the running for dirtiest player of his generation. He's also in contention for floppiest player of his generation.

Embiid seems to be maturing and is showing up in the playoffs finally. But he's been a perennially poor playoff performer and him being healthy doesn't change that. I think we'll see a better version of Embiid in the playoffs moving forward but we don't get to rewrite history and act like the past didn't happen.

[JustBuzzin]

Well he's not healthy and likely will never be at this stage of his career. Embiid is great, but it's getting old watching him choke in the playoffs.

I think his chances of winning in Philly are over. He needs to go to a better situation.

[Chokic]

Yes. The man was on his way to win jokic's 1st and 2nd mvp as well as unanimous mvp this year before his injuries.

[ropjhk]

He doesn’t have the mentality of a winner.

[cgf]

Nah. Big baby is just too soft.

[RB34]

No, to be the greatest player you need to perform in the playoffs.

He’s notorious for disappearing in the 4th quarter.

Maybe if he cut out all the pregame burgers etc.

The idea would be if he were healthy he would be good in the playoffs and have atleast one if not multiple chips.

He’s had healthy playoff runs that didn’t end in a ring.

[Plossum]

The Chris Paul of centres.

Wake me up when he achieves something.

[Lalouie]

no.....luka

[Cavsfansince84]

So all of Embiid's playoff failures are due to injury? I mean.. no. This is the first playoff run of his entire career where he actually sort of backed up all the rs hype he gets.

[Demagoog]

Just when you thought OP had his magnum opus of meltdowns after the Sixers got eliminated early in the playoffs again, he is not done throwing tantrums almost a week later. This makes me so happy. Keep them coming eyatoma.

P.S. Congratulations to Jokic, the 4x MVP.