Official: Joel Embiid is the NBA’s Most Valuable Player

Officially official:

your 2022-23 @Kia NBA MVP: @JoelEmbiid 🏆#KiaMVP pic.twitter.com/DNqnd5g9EY

— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) May 2, 2023

It was well deserved. You could make a case for Jokic, Giannis, or Embiid over the past three years, and the honest truth is that when we look back on this era 15-20 years from now, we’ll admit that each of those guys was worthy of at least one MVP. Now that’s been settled.

Joel finished the year with a career-high 33.1 points per game while grabbing 10 rebounds and throwing four assists on average. He was the  scoring champion for a second-straight season and shot 85.7% from the free throw line on 11.7 attempts per game. He logged about 1.5 blocks and one steal per game and was an elite rim protector, contesting and altering shots while anchoring a team with a 112.7 defensive rating, good for 8th in the league. He lead the Sixers to a 54-28 mark and the third-best record in the NBA, securing the three seed in the Eastern Conference, which was stronger in the regular season than the West.

I think people sometimes get caught up in all of the Embiid/Jokic bullshit and forget about Joel’s story. The guy did not start playing basketball until he was a teenager, suffered myriad severe injuries at the beginning of his NBA career, came through the Process era, and then became the NBA’s Most Valuable Player. That is absolutely astonishing when you put everything else aside and look at it in a vacuum. The guy didn’t even play the sport until age 15!

Sixers fans and media may obviously be biased in favor of Embiid, but we’ve watched the guy grow into an elite scorer at every level. He shoots the three at a 33.7% career clip, he is elite with that mid-range face up, and he’s a seven-footer hitting Euro steps and Dream Shakes with relative ease. You’ve heard other NBA players say he’s “unguardable,” and that’s often the case, exemplified perhaps by Brooklyn’s decision to double him on every catch throughout the entirety of the first round of the postseason.

Embiid is now the 5th Sixer to win MVP, joining Wilt Chamberlain, Dr. J, Moses Malone, and Allen Iverson. That’s amazing company. He left no doubt in the minds of voters, who gave him their first-place votes at a 73% clip:

Joel Embiid is the first player to win the Kia NBA MVP Award with the 76ers since Allen Iverson in the 2000-01 season.

Complete voting results ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/kko3o8tmxi

— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) May 2, 2023

There is some irony to Embiid winning the award one night after missing the first game of the second round due to injury. He also did not play against Jokic in Denver but it’s a regular season award, and he obviously did enough over the course of those 66 games.

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