Is it also fair to perceive Tatum as someone young to be the best player on a championship team with signature playoff performances in Milwaukee and Philadelphia the last two postseasons that were interrupted by injuries?
Tatum or Ant?
- Thread starter Kliq
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probably better to be a player like GA who has won one but has also lost in the first round four times.
Until Boston sent out the reserves to play the last four games, they were 62-16, which would be the same winning percentage. And the Celtics did that without cherry-picking games.
Depends. Are we talking about what he has actually done or potential upside? If he's 29 or 30 and hasn't won, I think you have to be thinking of him as more of a top sidekick on a winning team as opposed to being THE guy. At 26, you don't.
Embiid is 29. He seems clearly to be a better regular season player than Tatum has been (although Tatum still has room for improvement) but I think the lesson of the past several years is that the playoffs are different and not in a way that is kind to Mr. Embiid. Unlike with Tatum, I think it is nearly time to start asking whether Embiid can ever be THE guy on a champion.
With Embiid, it's been the perfect storm of injuries and bad teams.
Injured the first 2 seasons and limited to 30 games his 3rd. Lost to a very good Celtics team in his 4th year, but things looked promising with Ben Simmons winning RoY. Despite the oft-cited chemistry issues with Jimmy Butler in his 5th season, they lost Game 7 by 2 to a possessed Kawhi and the eventual champion Raptors.
The 2020 76'er's had let Butler walk and really were nothing more than Embiid and a Simmons starting his decline and so were easy fodder to a deep and reasonably healthy Celtics team in the bubble. Embiid actually played quite well, but had nobody else that could score on that team. The following season was the Simmons/Doc fiasco against the Hawks, but Embiid's stats were equal to that of his regular season numbers.
The following season, Morey had emptied the well to get Harden, but Embiid was injured by the time their 2nd round matchup with the Heat started. Finally, last year they were 1 win from upsetting the Celtics in the conference semis, and it wasn't Embiid's fault that Harden lost the shooting variance battle the last 2 games (and Harden last year was useless when his shots weren't falling).
Embiid and Maxey are a formidable team when healthy, and I wouldn't normally count them out as being potential spoilers. Jimmy Butler had a similar reputation, until suddenly at the age of 30 he was playing in the Finals. It's just unlikely that Embiid will be healthy this playoff season.
I think injuries are smily par for the course with Embiid. It's true that a healthier Embiid would have greater updside than the current one, but that guy doesn't exist.
As to bad teams, yes. But. They have tried a few different ways to build around him and none of them have worked.
At some point it is on the player(s).
I wouldn't count the healthy Sixers out, assuming we ever see them, but I think that without a better Embiid sidekick than Harden they aren't a team a worry about. I worry more about Miami, TBH.
Eh, that's a pretty charitable view of how Embiid performed against the Celtics.
He was hurt and didn't play Game 1 (which Harden won basically by himself)
In Games 2-7 he shot 42% from the field (never topping 50% once) and had by far his worst performance of the series in Game 7 when he went 5-18 from the field and got cooked repeatedly on switches by Jayson Tatum.
In the games they lost, Harden looked equally as bad but they both didn't show up when it mattered (and both looked like they'd rather be anywhere but on the court in that Game 7)