Off-peak times oblige, TrashTalk has taken the habit each summer of making you relive with emotion the greatest moments of the past season. Even in 2021, moreover, despite a summer that had then put all of our vital forces in PLS, but that’s another story. So we go back to our good old formula, we take a few steps back, a few months, and we remember that this 2021-22 season was crazy, from the first day to the last. Today ? We come back to the evening when Joel Embiid gave everything to convince the basketball world that he deserved the title of MVP.
A race for the MVP, it is played until the last day, and that, Joel Embiid understood it very well. In his fierce duel against Nikola Jokic last year – which he ended up losing despite everything – Jojo gave us memorable performances, and more generally a very, very high level 2021-22 exercise. However, as it is not possible to go back on every game of the boy during this campaign, we decided to retain the date of April 9, 2022, which perhaps best represents the best season of the boy in career.
In NBA jargon, the month of April is very often synonymous with the Playoffs. However, it is also where the last regular season games are played. For their penultimate meeting of this 2021-22 campaign, Sixers and Pacers meet at the Wells Fargo Center, with different ambitions. In Indiana, if the bodies are indeed present in the room, the spirits have already been on vacation for a long time. Already that we should not expect much from the Farmers against Philadelphia in normal times, we expect the worst that evening, because the band of Joel Embiid is clearly not here to laugh. Still in the race for second place in the East, Doc Rivers’ men are complete. Maxey, Harden, Harris and Green therefore accompany Jojo, who has the title of MVP in mind, and sees in this meeting an opportunity to make a statement game in order to make everyone agree on who deserves the trophy the most Maurice Podoloff. Spoiler: he pulled it off pretty well.
Another W ????
Joel Embiid tallied more brownie points for MVP votes — 41 points and 20 rebounds. He is the first and ONLY player to have these numbers in a single game this season????
Time to run it back for tonight’s game‼️
⏰: 7 PM
????: Wells Fargo Center
VS: Detroit Pistons pic.twitter.com/XXMqZNBJ1F— Philadelphia 76ers (@philasixers215) April 10, 2022
From the start of the match, it was very logically the Sixers who took the lead in the wake of their franchise player, who already had 11 points and 6 rebounds at the end of the first quarter. Opposite, we would like to tell you about the “resistance” offered by the Pacers, but we will only talk about an “attempt to hang on”. And for good reason, Indiana will lead only once in this meeting: 3-1 after one minute, and that’s it. Philly unfolds, and the neo-French splashes the game with all his talent. Tomars? Sure. And-ones? Too easy. A little step-back from the car park as if I weren’t 2m13 tall for 125 kg? Do you want some here. Opposite, it must be said that Isaiah Jackson can not do anything, and even deserves applause for having had the courage to make the trip for the sole purpose of being torn in all directions. The rest of the game will also be similar, despite a return of the Pacers to five small points in the third quarter, quickly annihilated by the omnipresence of Mister Embiid. Final score: 133-120 for the Sixers, who never really had to work. In this one-sided confrontation, one man will therefore really stand out: Furkan Korkmaz Joel Embiid.
Joel Embiid is now the 5th player to record 40+ points and 20+ rebounds on 80%+ FG in a game (in the shot-clock era), joining:
Bob Pettit
Wilt Chamberlain (6x)
John Drew
Charles Barkley https://t.co/AqDhhlXmqm— NBA.com/Stats (@nbastats) April 9, 2022
We’re clearly not going to waste your time unnecessarily so keep your eyes peeled and pack a fan to avoid heatstroke, because here’s the boy’s final stat line: 41 points, 20 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals and 1 block at 14/17 in shooting including 2/2 from the parking lot and 11/15 in throws. A hell of a day at work for Jojo, who couldn’t really have been asked for more. In 36 minutes and 56 seconds, the boy will have made the total to helpless Pacers. By the way, the pivot becomes only the fifth player in history to complete a 40/20 game with more than 80% shooting. The other names on the list? Charles Barkley, Bob Pettit, John Drew and Wilt Chamberlain, who meanwhile directed it… six times. What did you expect too? A rather closed club therefore, that Joel joins okay. Thirteenth game in 40/10 of the season, the performance of the boy will also allow him to lock the title of top scorer, but there we have completely stopped counting the achievements. We also can’t help but think that almost four years ago, Embiid already put up 40 points and 21 rebounds on the head of the Pacers! The coincidence is quite crazy, even if on this evening in December 2018, our hero of the day had only shot at 13/22 shooting. The nullos what.
This April 9, 2022 was neither the first nor the last time that Joel Embiid blew us away on a basketball court. And while that stratospheric 40/20 wasn’t enough to land Jojo his first MVP title, there’s no debating that it was one of the biggest performances ever. that we have experienced this season. So just for that, thank you dear compatriot.