January 23, 2024
Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports
Joel Embiid broke a Sixers franchise record with 70 points Monday night.
There is no other way to put it: Joel Embiid looks like the single best basketball player on the planet.
He certainly did after painting a masterpiece in South Philadelphia Monday night: a 70-point performance to lead the Sixers to a win over the San Antonio Spurs, their sixth consecutive victory. It was the perfect manner in which Embiid could punctuate his dominant scoring run and share with the world an important message: there is nobody who can match his brilliance.
Before tonight, only 13 times had a 70-point performance been accomplished in the NBA — six of those performances belonging to Wilt Chamberlain. But the crazy thing is this: a handful of minutes into this one, it was clear that the reigning NBA MVP had a chance to reach the top of the mountain. He scored 24 points in the first quarter alone, knocking down eight of his 12 shot attempts and all eight of his tries from the free throw line.
"It was hard to say," Embiid said when asked at what point he knew he could be on the verge of something special. "I had a pretty good start... but it was also depending on the game. I had 59 and the game was still pretty close."
"Once I got back, I was like, 'well, here's my chance, so I might as well go and do it.'"
Embiid overshadowed an awfully impressive performance by top overall pick Victor Wembanyama, raining mid-range jumper after mid-range jumper over the outstretched arms of the 7-foot-4 rookie and knocking them down with ease. The final few minutes of the game were a bit chaotic and disorganized, but for the most part Embiid was scoring within the flow of an offense that Sixers head coach Nick Nurse has masterfully built around the magical ability of a player who is on pace to win the NBA's scoring title for the third consecutive season.
"The time that it hit me was the start of the third [quarter]," Nurse said of Embiid, who scored 34 points in the first half. "Jeez, that's a lot with a whole lot [of time] to go."
Embiid leveraged his otherworldly strength to decimate San Antonio's front line on the interior. He grabbed 18 rebounds, and half of them were on the offensive glass. Embiid, league's foremost foul-drawer and foul-shooter, was absolutely relentless — his motor has perhaps never been so high. It enabled him to shoot 23 free throws — nearly as many as the entire Spurs team combined — 21 of which went through the net.
"His sheer size gets him a lot of stuff around the basket and a lot of free throws," Nurse said. "When he gets motivated like that, anything can happen, I guess."
Embiid has always been a showman. He was up to his usual theatrics as he shattered the record books: playing to the crowd, drawing raucous "MVP" chants and shooting the ball just about every single time the crowd asked him to. Embiid ignited the fans to such an extent that Danuel House Jr. was booed mercilessly for attempting a three-point try in the fourth quarter instead of passing the ball to Embiid immediately.
Embiid turned a January basketball game between non-conference opponents on completely different standings into an unforgettable spectacle. With every passing mid-range jumper, the crowd got even louder, to the point that the crowd gave him a standing ovation simply for walking in the direction of the scorer's table to check back into the game in the fourth quarter.
The crowd noise peaked when Embiid reached the summit: 70 points, which he scored with a simple left-handed layup in transition.
The moment Joel Embiid got 70 pic.twitter.com/3UqfqKBDpK
— Daniel Olinger (@dan_olinger) January 23, 2024
It was a remarkable moment to put the finishing touches on a remarkable evening. Embiid showed why he is the game's best, why he and the Sixers deserve your attention and why another MVP trophy may be waiting in the wings for a player unlike any other in the history of the NBA.
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