‘He’s a savant’: How Joel Embiid’s basketball IQ keyed another MVP-caliber season

Joel Embiid was in the midst of pouring in 52 points, powering and gliding and torquing his body to sink an astonishing 20 out of 25 shots.

But when the Boston Celtics’ stifling defense swarmed Embiid down the stretch of a 103-101 win last week, the superstar center dished the ball to P.J. Tucker to fire off a corner three-pointer. Then Embiid did it again. And again.

“The game goes fast, but you’ve got to be able to process it,” Embiid said after that game.

Embiid just put together his most dominant regular season, thanks to his blend of imposing physicality and unbelievably versatile skill set on both ends of the floor. Yet his mind has also fueled this run to become the frontrunner to win the league’s Most Valuable Player award, after finishing as the runner-up the past two seasons. “The Process” knows how to mentally process, and that is a significant reason why, in his words, he has become virtually unguardable.

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“You can’t score the points that he scores without having a pretty high IQ,” Sixers coach Doc Rivers said. “Because every team, they’re going to throw everything at him. They’re going to switch. They’re going to double-team fast. They’re gonna double-team slow. They’re going to double-team.

“You just know that going into it, and he still finds [a way].”

Embiid led the NBA in scoring for the second consecutive season, posting a career-high 33.1 points per game. He also set career marks in overall field-goal percentage (54.8%), two-point field-goal percentage (58.7%) and effective field-goal percentage (57.3%), evidence that he is not only a terrific shooter but has identified which shots make him become seemingly automatic from inside, midrange, and beyond the arc. He tied last season’s career mark with 4.2 assists per game, illustrating his comfort level reading defenses and becoming a more willing passer. He anchored a Sixers team that finished third in the NBA in offensive efficiency, (117 points per 100 possessions), eighth in defensive efficiency (112.7 points allowed per 100 possessions), and first in net rating in “clutch” minutes (plus-16.6), when the scoring margin was within five points with five minutes or less remaining.

Sharpening basketball IQ first comes from studying the game. Embiid and personal trainer Drew Hanlen are self-proclaimed film nerds. But they don’t only dissect clips of Embiid’s play. They watch all-timers — such as Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Dirk Nowitzki — with repertoires Embiid can emulate, even if they previously appeared unconventional for a big man.

While his feet soak in an ice bucket at his locker following games, Embiid is often live-streaming another NBA matchup. Rivers compared that diligence to other greats he has coached, such as Chris Paul, Kevin Garnett, and Rajon Rondo, who would always arrive at the facility ready to enthusiastically break down any game from the previous night.

“He’s a savant, and he watches,” Rivers said of Embiid. “Guys like that, they’re pretty smart. It’s hard to fool them.”

Experience has also been a valuable teacher during Embiid’s seven NBA seasons, leading him to conclude he has “seen everything” from defensive coverages “so I kind of know what to do in a lot of situations.” Playing alongside NBA assist leader James Harden certainly puts him in ideal positions to generate offense. But that awareness helped Embiid make a fundamental change this season, shifting more of his touches from the low post to the elbow (where the free-throw line meets the vertical lane line) and the nail at the center of the free throw line.

That deviation from the paint drew criticism from Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon in a Sports Illustrated piece, prompting Embiid to candidly retort that, “You can’t win this way anymore. It’s not the frickin’ ‘90s or ‘80s.” Operating more from the middle of the floor “changed everything,” Embiid said, because it is more difficult for defenses to double-team in that space.

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That allows Embiid to face the basket with a more complete vision of the court to attack off the dribble — resulting in buckets or fouls drawn, often at the same time — or distribute without needing to throw the ball “through hands,” he said. Before facing the Sixers in recent weeks, Dallas Mavericks coach Jason Kidd and Toronto Raptors coach Nick Nurse both mentioned, unprompted, how difficult it is to send an additional defender to Embiid when he isolates from that area.

“There’s just too many moving pieces when the ball’s right there in the middle like that,” Nurse said. “What’s made it hard is he makes all those shots, just like one after another, after another, after another, after another. That gets a bit discouraging. …

“It’s just another thing you got to worry about. You’ve got to worry about him running you over and laying it in. You’ve got to worry about him [in an] early post-up. You’ve got to worry about him steamrolling down the lane on the pick and roll with Harden. Now, he’s got this, too, and he’ll also pick and pop for three. The great players have all that stuff.”

Sometimes, Embiid will catch the ball and make a decisive move. Other times, he will toy with the defense by baiting the extra body to drift over with the intention of passing, a strategy Rivers said Embiid has “never done before in his career” and now makes him a “graduate”-level facilitator. How Embiid approaches double teams was the topic of an entire story recently published by The Ringer, which noted that he plows through them as a display of force more often than back-to-back MVP and fellow dazzling center Nikola Jokic, who more regularly picks those schemes apart with his passing.

Still, Embiid no longer wants to unnecessarily force his shot over two or three defenders. He frequently reiterates that he “can’t win alone.” And now he has even more reason to trust his teammates, featuring shooters who propelled the Sixers to lead the NBA in three-point percentage (38.7%) and consistently benefit from being on the receiving end of an Embiid pass.

“In the past, if we missed a shot or two,” Embiid said, “then I’d be like, ‘All right, if you’re not going to make shots, then I’ve got to go do it by myself.’ And sometimes you might have to. But in those situations — over time, just with experience — just understanding that, as long as I can make my teammates feel better about themselves and they’re touching the ball, it’s going to make me better.”

Exhibit A: Tucker’s critical shots at the end of last week’s win over Boston, which were set up by Embiid passes that Tucker called “perfect.”

Because those sequences were easy for the MVP frontrunner to process.

“Our offense is predicated towards getting [Embiid] the ball in his spots,” said teammate Tobias Harris, who has played with Embiid since 2019. “And it’s on the rest of us to just be open, be ready, be sharp and when we have our opportunities to take advantage of them.

“The growth of his game since I personally got here on the offensive end is as sharp as I’ve ever seen it.”