THE NBA HAS MONSTERS — 73, 70, 62 POINTS — BUT THE NETWORKS WANT MORE
Joel Embiid averages 36 points and likely will be ruled ineligible for a second straight MVP, which underscores offensive overproduction and if the public is ready for too many stars eyeing Kobe's 81
He’s armed with a new contract until 2030 and an Apple Vision Pro for media calculations, knowing the NFL produced 56.6 million viewers for 49ers-Lions while banking $120 billion. So Adam Silver needs action, baby. He wants social-media juice through Taylor + Travis. He needs starpower alongside Patrick Mahomes. He must convince networks of all sorts to spend, spend and keep spending after 120 million watch the Super Bowl.
But will it be enough to convince Bob Iger and David Zaslav when the NBA’s Most Valuable Player, Joel Embiid, prefers to sit in the Denver altitude than win another marquee award? The league has a 65-game yardstick for major postseason honors. At present, though he’s averaging 36 points and unfurled a 70-point game last week, Embiid is testing the award by resting against the defending champions with left knee soreness. He decided not to suit up only 15 minutes before tipoff. In Colorado, where he hasn’t played since November 2019, the fans chanted, “Where’s Embiid at?” He missed a loss Monday in Portland, then returned Tuesday night at Golden State, where his left knee was injured again late in a loss, which led Philadelphia coach Nick Nurse to say, “We are going to continue to do all the things that are necessary, that they’ve been doing the whole time he’s been playing here. He has these checks, he gets to these points.”
The problem, in the record books, is that Embiid already has missed 12 games and can miss only five more with 36 remaining. Imagine telling the networks that a supreme big man, who refuses to face two-time MVP Nikola Jokic at 5,280 feet, won’t perform in one of the season’s premier regular-season games. Embiid’s aches and limps are part of his legendary career, of course. But deciding so late for the crowd and the opponent — and playfully cupping his ear for fans — led to strong suspicions in the sport. The Nuggets coach, Michael Malone, called for punishment against the 76ers — and Silver ultimately would declare Embiid ineligible for MVP, which means the award could return to Jokic.
This is the best of the NBA, competing against the NFL?
“We found out very late and again, I don't know how you go from being active/available to out,” Malone said. “I'm sure that the league will do their due diligence because that's frowned upon. We've had situations this year where we've talked to the league and they told us if a player goes from being active to out, there's going to be an investigation.”
Said Embiid: “I haven’t been feeling too well, but I just got to keep battling.”
Is this another violation of load management, which Silver no longer supports as a valid reason for players to rest? As league cop Joe Dumars said, “Every player should want to play 82 games.” But playing fewer than 65, while on an active roster, means some paying spectators can’t watch the best while a player conveniently pauses to help his team’s health in the postseason. It sounds iffy when Embiid can score 70 and then spend time determining when to play again, and when he does play, he limps to the locker room and awaits another MRI. He isn’t reluctant to speak about video documentaries he’s making about the African diaspora, a storytelling challenge off the court. We can’t wait, but at 29, this is the Hall of Famer’s prime, even when he says he loves football — world version — “more than basketball.”
Of late, Embiid is among those perfecting a Pop-A-Shot culture. He was topped by Luka Doncic’s 73 points, inspired by a Phoenix fan who earlier told him to “get on the treadmill.” If Doncic has looked like a burger-and-beer dude, his shape has improved, prompting Dallas coach Jason Kidd to call him the best player in Mavericks history while placing him in a vague similarity range with Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. Dirk Nowitzki isn’t a factor. “He's in the atmosphere of MJ, the best to ever do it, LeBron, Kobe. And so, just to appreciate what this young man's doing at the age of 24, it’s something that Dallas has never seen,” Kidd said. “I’ve said this internally: He is better than Dirk. He does things Dirk could never do, and now is the opportunity of getting the right people around him to ultimately win a championship.”
Powerhouse games of 73 and 70 are dazzling enough. But every night seemed to bring more rockers, with Devin Booker and Karl-Anthony Towns scoring 62 and four others passing 40. Four years after Kobe’s death, are we willing to suggest who might break his 81-point night? When Doncic held a page with “73” in front of him, didn’t it recall Wilt Chamberlain’s photo when he scored 100? This isn’t a mere high-potency period. Scoring has become almost too easy, with an average team’s total increasing 15 points a game in the last decade and almost 20 points in 20 years, to almost 116. We live in the age of three-pointers, from the logo and everywhere else, and any administrative idea that this is good for basketball doesn’t involve studying body language. Fans expect monster games now, which means they aren’t monsters.
The man who helped create razz-ma-tazz, Warriors coach Steve Kerr, thinks the game is blessed with more great players fueled by the raging pace. “Guys are so skilled today. There’s so much space on the floor, everybody’s playing multiple bigs who can shoot threes, so there’s just too much ground to cover for the defense. Pace is up, and over the last few years everybody is playing faster,” he said. “Teams have gotten really confident in their offensive schemes with all that spacing and pace. So the last few years offensive ratings have climbed and climbed.”
Then, naturally, Kerr invoked the officials. Are they being told to let offenses fly, including differences in free-throw percentages that seem out of kilt? “The final piece of it for me is just the way we officiate the game favors the offense in a way that it didn't 15 years ago,” he said. “The rules have been altered to really give the benefit of the doubt to the offensive player. I think we’re actually entering a phase now where we’re going to have to look at, just like the league did 20 years ago, look at the rules, see where the game’s going, and maybe make some adjustments back in the other direction.”
Said Indiana coach Rick Carlisle, who was burned by Booker: “This is compelling stuff in the NBA. If you’re a defensive coordinator in this league, good luck.”
Saturday night, Steph Curry scored 46 points on 35 shots with only three free throws. James still looks 29, not 39, and had 36 points, 20 rebounds and 12 assists in almost 48 minutes. The national show was billed as Steph vs. LeBron, drowning in nostalgia as the Lakers managed to win, 145-144. “It’s something that you will truly take all in when you’re done playing,” said James, “and be able to watch with your grandkids and say that I played against one of the best players ever to play this game. Steph, after the game, came to me and said, ‘How does it keep getting better? How do we keep getting better?’ I think it’s just a true testament to us putting the work in in the game, being true to the game, and the game just continues to give back to us.”
“Every year we get to do this and go back and forth,” Curry said. “We’ve had the battles — the Finals runs, the playoff battles last year — and after the horn sounded tonight, there was a little laugh of, I can't imagine a scenario where a game like tonight happens, with him in Season 21 and me in Year 15. You look forward to the battles, but you also appreciate the mutual respect of what it takes to keep doing what you're doing at this level. Only a few people know how hard it is. I'm happy to be in that group."
Oh, wait, Kerr was back to blame the refs. “My Mom is here and I want to be on my best behavior,” he said. “So I’m not going to comment on their 43 free throws to our 16. I’m not going to comment on Steph shooting three free throws in 43 minutes.”
Yet two nights later, dragged down by youth, James looked like a man who, like Curry, will struggle to reach the playoffs. Too much offense gives an advantage to teams such as the Houston Rockets, who picked up Dillon Brooks to raise hell in LeBron’s eardrums. Again, officials entered the scene, for better or worse. They missed Brooks flipping his arm at Jarred Vanderbilt, who responded by shoving Brooks in the chest and drew a technical foul. As they verbally battled, Brooks referred to Vanderbilt as a “p—y,” but Vanderbilt was ejected from the game. Brooks was trying to toy with James, his lot in life, and it worked.
“Next question,” said James, whose team is at 24-25 and trying to hold off the 22-24 Rockets for the ninth and 10th play-in berths.
Said Lakers star Anthony Davis: “He's going for a wide-open dunk and (Brooks) just pushed him in the back. It's not a safe play. Guys get hurt like that. And you got to know what type of player (Brooks) is. (The referees) kind of let that just keep going on and Brooks kind of provoked it. He talks and says whatever he wants to the refs, to players and at the end of the day, we're men. No man is going to talk towards another man the way he was talking to Vando. So, Vando did what he had to do.”
If Silver wanted headlines, he had them. “I feel like he may feel like I did a dirty play," Brooks said. “When he feels that way, he likes to bump. It's basketball. We bump and tussle. I feel like he took it a little too far.”
The league got another hot take when Anthony Edwards won a game for the Minnesota Timberwolves, in first place in the Western Conference, and still blamed officials. “The refs were bad tonight. Yeah, they was terrible. We was playing 8-on-5,” he said, chirping that Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was allowed 16 free throws, making 15, while Edwards hit four of four. “The cat got their tongue tonight, so it’s all good. It’s not fair, but it’s all good.”
It’s a wacko league when the Los Angeles Clippers are 27-7 since mid-November, meaning James Harden is contributing to the texture of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George with a career-high 41.8 percent from three-point land. “A measuring stick against a great team,” coach Ty Lue said after beating the Celtics in Boston. “We wanted to see where we’re at. We had that on our mind.”
A 30-13 start in Milwaukee didn’t help first-year coach Adrian Griffin keep his job. With the Bucks playing poor defense, Doc Rivers emerged after failing with the 76ers and Clippers. He won his only coaching championship in 2008 with the Celtics. It’s 2024, but he has a slogan: “I think we have to find our identity. Like if you’re gonna have Fear the Deer, you gotta fear the deer. I asked the players, ‘Who are we?’ When a team is connected and they got it, they’ll give you an answer. We don’t have an answer yet. We gotta find what are we, who are we.”
At this point, expect the Nuggets and Celtics to emerge in early June. What if the Sixers somehow arrive in the Finals? Joel Embiid would have to play in Colorado, but who knows, maybe he wouldn’t.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.