from a 76ers forum user:

In my view, Joel Embiid is a product of today's player development-focused environment. His transformation from a project to an MVP under Drew Hanlen's guidance is remarkable. However, to become a true winner, you need to play many real 5-on-5 cerebral games to experience various schemes. This is how Doncic developed into a savant at a young age. The same can be said for Giannis and Jokic, who play a lot of international games in the offseason. What does Embiid do? He plays 1-on-1 against small trainers, emulating moves from YouTube.

Zach LaVine is a prime example of this issue. He is a very talented player, but he didn't develop his basketball IQ. He knows different ways to get 50pts from various moves taught by Drew Hanlen but he doesn't know how to win.

With Embiid, he doesn't know how to pace himself. He always goes hard against weak teams and in early games. Embiid also knows how to operate when the scheme is vanilla. When the refs stop calling fouls, he still tries to foul bait in crunch time. You can say he should stop doing so, but what makes you think he knows how to be an elite scorer without foul baiting?

What if the main reason he's hard to defend is that defenders are trying not to foul him? This could explain why he gets most of his scoring early in the game.

Look at Jokic—he's okay with looking foolish in the regular season. He understands that you can have all the spotlight you want, but the real prize is in the playoffs, and that's what he's saving himself for. Jokic also has much more in-game experience, which is why he is often a step ahead of his opponents. He can punish the defense if they play physical, if the refs arent blowing their whistle, if the spacing is bad or if the defense is throwing multiple defenders. And you get all these conditions with these FIBA tournaments.

What's worse is that Embiid misses a lot of regular season games, further limiting his already very vanilla regular season on-court experience compared to other top players.

In that Drew Hanlen podcast with Joel Embiid, you can get a glimpse into his mindset. He focuses heavily on 1v1 play and the development of his game. He takes an entire year to see what needs changing, but this could be achieved way earlier if he’s playing in the pro league like Doncic as a teenager of he’s playing in international games every offseason like Jokic.

As a result, every year we face a problem that surprises us in the playoffs, which we then try to address in the offseason, like rebounding last year. These issues could have been identified much earlier if Embiid's game experience was like that of other professional athletes his age, with hundreds or even thousands more high-intensity games played.

I wonder how many stages of grief DM will cope with.

I ain't reading all that shit

I'll just leave this here.

There is no way in hell I'm reading a word of any of that

Jokic won it all one time, because he had two key factors:

1) a GREAT team around him and a guard in Murray who played at a superstar elite playoff level.

AND

2) One of the easiest fucking schedules you'll ever see (maybe even easier than the Celtics this year?) As we could all see, they got worked against better competition that matched up better the following season.

That's the reality. Outside of that the guy hasn't done shit in the seasons where he has won MVP:

-4-1'd in the second round in 2020-21
-Swept in the first round in 2021-22
-Lost in the second round in 2023-24

Hasn't made it out of the second round in 3 of the last 4 seasons, all seasons where he won MVP. The man caught a break ONE time so let's not act like he has this crazy run of success 😭

still a better legacy than Embiid

This is one of those arbitrary stats that if we went looking, we could find a similarly obscure stat to say otherwise. There are people who believe the world is flat, despite undeniable proof to the contrary because there is always an echo chamber to confirm your delusions. That includes propping up Embiid with this nonsense stat you think is some "gotcha"

What I mean to say is that this one stat vs. countless others that show he is a loser is not the strong statement or vote of confidence you are thinking, especially when you consider that Butler by himself carried the Heat to two final appearances and Embiid hasn't been able to make one conference final.

Alternatively, we could also say this happens because Embiid has a **** attitude and he and his team fold in the clutch due to his toxicity. Under any pressure, Embiid crumbles and begins to either get aggressive or act like a baby, crying, pouting, and complaining. His victim mindset is shameful. Personally, he needs to take accountability, take it upon himself to get better, and persevere under any circumstance.

The crazy thing is that he can still come back from this. He now has the best set of #2 and #3 arguably any player has ever had in history. Hopefully, he matures and doesn't mess this up for himself. A ring or 2 could possibly mean Top 12-15 all time. Floundering yet again would not be surprising, and not taking accountability for it would also not be a shock.

Ok Jokic soon winning his 4th MVP

Embidd playing 40-50 games a season.

Summarized it

Stopped reading here. This is a shit fucking post.

Will be easier next season if we get the sixers. Pandemic P will not do shit.