Joel Embiid is no stranger to dominance. Standing at a gigantic seven-feet, 280 pounds, the Sixers’ big man is often a lethal combination of the biggest and strongest person any time he steps on the basketball court. No one would bat an eyelash if you were to invoke his name in the same sentence as other Sixers’ legends like Julius Erving, Charles Barkley, and Allen Iverson. Embiid was the centerpiece of the infamous “Process” and is unquestionably one of the NBA’s brightest stars. If not for Nikola Jokic kicking ass and taking names in Denver last season, he’d also have an MVP to his name.
While Embiid still has so much of a road to travel and still so much to accomplish (an NBA title, anyone?), Wednesday evening might have been his early-career magnum opus.
Joel Embiid had 50 points and 12 rebounds in 27:03.
That's the fewest minutes played in a 50-point, 10-rebound game in the shot-clock era (since 1954-55).
h/t @EliasSports pic.twitter.com/qk4fROCWtT
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) January 20, 2022
You read that tweet right. You don’t have to rub your eyes and clean your glasses. 50 points. 12 rebounds. In just over 27 total minutes played against the hapless Orlando Magic. (And a 123-110 win on the court and over the consensus line of -11.5.)
There’s being the biggest, strongest person on the court, and there’s making fellow grown men—figuratively, professional basketball players, people at the very top of a very narrow and very select field—look like amateurs. Kids, even. (Poor Mo Bamba had his first career 30+ point game on the other side.)
Yet, that’s what Embiid managed to do against Orlando. It’s one achievement to drop 50 on any team. It’s another to do it in just barely over a half of play minutes-wise while technically only missing eight of 40 shot attempts (17-of-23 on field goals, 15-of-17 on free throws). It’s so rare that he’s the first person ever to do it in the shot-clock era, as a reminder. So, almost seven decades of play. It’s not like that’s nearly the total average life span of a human being or anything.
As chairman of the Unstoppable Big Man Fraternity, Wilt Chamberlain would be proud of someone who would almost certainly be one of his proteges.
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