For a good chunk of the 2010s it was an open question in the NBA as to whether Joel Embiid, who was crowned the league’s Most Valuable Player this week, was even worth the bother. For a solid three years the Philadelphia 76ers tempted fate while aggressively trying to lose games just to put themselves in position to land the freshman center with the third pick in the 2014 draft, effectively reinventing the practice now known as tanking. And when the Kansas product went on to miss his first two seasons because of a bum foot, hoops purists praised the basketball gods for serving the Sixers their just deserts.
All the while general manager Sam Hinkie encouraged fans to “trust the process”. But they couldn’t help but wonder if Embiid, a master troll, was winding them up by only showing flashes of his great potential. Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal were most prominent among the critics who had dismissed the seven-footer as a “Tall Man”, the bad word for the big-man scorer who forgoes his obvious size advantage close to the basket to chuck away with abandon from beyond the three-point arc.
Three years ago, after watching Embiid shrink from a challenge against an undersized Boston Celtics team, Barkley and O’Neal summed up Embiid with the worst word of them all: soft. “It’s not that it’s hate,” Shaq said. “It’s that we see greatness in him.” But to Embiid’s immense credit, he vowed to up his game. “I appreciate everything you say,” he told them after a strong bounce back in his very next game. “Thank you.”
So it was only fitting that on Tuesday night O’Neal and Barkley were the ones to award the MVP to Embiid. “I still remember the conversation we had a couple years ago,” he told the Inside the NBA crew on a video call from Boston, his teammates and coaches huddled close. “It was actually here in Boston, and you guys were all on me about [how] I gotta be dominant … That helped a lot and that changed a lot in terms of the way that I went about my business.”
Embiid’s MVP season should go down as a major validation of The Process, a breakthrough made sweeter by the Sixers remaining undefeated through the first two rounds of the Eastern Conference playoffs. And this despite him missing the last two games with a sprained knee. Instead, it’s become a third-rail issue, yet another occasion for the NBA to cannonball back into the wokeism debate.
Former NBA center Kendrick Perkins dived in hardest from his ESPN platform. During a First Take debate about Embiid’s chances of unseating reigning two-time MVP Nikola Jokic, Perkins held fast to the idea that the largely white media constituency that votes on the award has a habit of playing identity politics and choosing white players over Black ones. By way of example he cited two of the most hotly second-guessed ballots: Steve Nash snubbing O’Neal in 2005, and Dirk Nowitzki topping Kobe Bryant in 2007 – the season the Laker legend was famously saddled with a roster that included Smush Parker, Kwame Brown and other castaways. “They made the playoffs with that roster,” Perkins fumed.
Immediately, JJ Redick, who made his legend on all-white teams at Duke University, rushed to pull back the lens. “I mean no offense to First Take … but what we’ve just witnessed is the problem with this show,” he intoned. “We create narratives that do not exist in reality.”
And with that the battle lines were drawn; as white fans took up for Redick on social media, non-white commentators rushed to add the nuances Perkins left out of his argument. “You can understand why if LeBron James and Michael Jordan never won three MVPs in a row, it looks a little weird when Nikola Jokic, a white man with the physique of a baguette, wins three times in a row,” uber-pundit Bomani Jones said on his HBO Sports show Game Theory. “And the last time someone won three times in a row it was a white guy with the physique of a wet Newport [cigarette].”
He was talking of course about the Celtics’ Larry Bird, still the poster boy for a certain type of white basketball fan. And though it’s undeniable that greater talents have come and gone since Bird won his last MVP in 1986, the idea that another player could equal his succession of awards has always been treated as overkill. Jordan and James are the rare duo who’ve come close to three-peating at least twice in their careers only to be left hanging by what can only be described as voter fatigue. Come on, we all know they’re great, the ballot casters insist. So why not let Karl Malone or Derrick Rose have a chance?
As a lifelong Bulls fan I was beyond thrilled when Rose won in 2011, but not so naive to think that voters weren’t bearing a grudge against James for The Decision. Three years ago Rose earned one first-place vote from fans (who represent the 101st and final ballot in the poll) simply for helping the Knicks snap an eight-year playoff drought. The galling irony? Embiid also received one first-place vote on that ballot despite finishing runner-up to Jokic – whose stellar play and Serbian heritage made him a sentimental favorite to equal Bird this year. If Julius Randle or Jalen Brunson manage to keep New York in the championship hunt beyond this season, I wouldn’t be surprised if they become fixtures in the MVP conversation too simply because they play in the league’s largest media market.
All of which is to say implicit bias is definitely A Thing, and Redick and his supporters would be fools not to at least acknowledge as much until the NBA media horde becomes more representative of the league it covers. Even by winning this time around Embiid, with 73 first-place votes to Jokic’s 15, there’s bound to be talk of how the generation of Black superstars emerging to carry the league after James aren’t even American anymore. Three years after Giannis Antetokounmpo became Greece’s maiden NBA MVP, the Cameroon-born Embiid follows as the third African-born player to claim the prize, after Hakeem Olajuwon and – wait for it – Nash.
It’s a helluva story for a guy who switched into the sport from soccer as a teen, fought his way back onto the court after multiple surgeries, and survived constant hazing from two of the game’s greatest big men. Even if the Sixers fall short of the NBA finals, it’s something no one can take away from him: an award that remains the clearest harbinger of a Hall of Fame career. No doubt this was his most dominant run yet, the year he ended every debate he started. History shouldn’t remember it any other way.