Joel Embiid has been playing the best basketball of his career this season, and that trend continued on Wednesday, when the big man had 31 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists to lead the Philadelphia 76ers over the 118-113 Houston Rockets. The victory broke a streak of three games lost to the Sixers and increased their lead in the Eastern Conference to 1.5 games.
While Embiid will be very pleased with the team’s return, it was a remarkable night for him on a personal level. This was his 12th straight game with at least 25 points, which puts him in a class with Allen Iverson and Wilt Chamberlain as the only other Sixers have a streak like this.
Of course, this is a somewhat arbitrary statistic, but the fact that the only other players to achieve this are ex-MVPs and Hall of Fame members illustrates how historic this Embiid race was. In this stretch, Embiid leads the league in scoring and averaging 34 points and 10.2 rebounds per game, with 54.3% of field shots.
Embiid’s performance against the Rockets was a microcosm of everything we’ve seen from him this season. He was dominant in and out of painting, knocked down mid-range jumpers and reached the free-throw line frequently. DeMarcus Cousins simply had no answer for Embiid’s range of movements.
And in the fourth half, when the Sixers really needed him, Embiid took over. He landed a series of clutch free throws along the straight and scored nine of the Sixers ‘last 12 points while holding back the Rockets’ attempt to return.
Embiid has been struggling with back pain since suffering a heavy crash against the Los Angeles Lakers last month, and there was no guarantee that he would match the Rockets. After the game, he gave an update, saying that his back was “very tense” all the time, but that he should be fine in the long run. The Sixers will have to expect that to be the case, because their outstanding performance on Wednesday showed just how important it is to their success.