There's a case to be made that Joel Embiid is one of the five most valuable players in the NBA right now.
If we're being honest, he has zero chance of winning the MVP award and might not receive any votes, which on the surface makes sense based strictly on his availability. The 76ers fan favorite has missed 14 games, has yet to play 30 minutes in any game and has been on the floor for less than 36 percent of his team's total minutes.
Embiid's play has been a nice story for sure, but one worthy of a near-podium MVP finish? Not a chance ... right?
There are over 200 players in the NBA -- including seven on his own team -- that have spent more time on the hardwood this season than Embiid. But when it boils down to team performance based on whether a player is on or off the court -- and even allowing for the fact that the Sixers beat the Bucks without him Wednesday night -- few can go pound for pound with Philly's not-so-tiny dancer.
There's an adage in all sports -- not just basketball -- that a team's scoring margin over the course of a season is a better predictor of team strength than actual wins and losses. It's called Pythagorean expectation. Originally invented by statistics pioneer Bill James for use in baseball to determine how many wins a team should have based on runs scored and allowed, the Pythagorean concept was first applied to basketball by current Rockets GM Daryl Morey, long before he started working in an NBA front office. Though we won't get into how it's calculated in Morey's original work, we can look at points scored and allowed for teams with players on and off the floor and calculate how many wins that equates to during the course of a season.
We took the best player for every team this season according to RPM's wins metric (making a handful of subjective substitutions here or there, such as replacing Jeff Teague with Paul George) and ran their on/off court splits through the Pythagorean formula to calculate expected wins with that player on and off the floor, projecting that performance over an 82-game schedule.
It's this exercise that paints Embiid among the NBA's elite difference-makers.
In the limited time he's been on the floor, the 76ers have the scoring margin of a 55-win team. Even after that rousing comeback win over the Clippers on Tuesday night, they have the scoring margin of a 12-win team with him off the floor this season. That's a difference of 43 wins, based solely on team performance hinged on his presence.
How does that stack up against other team stars? Here are those numbers for all 31 of the players we ran through this exercise, sorted from greatest to smallest in terms of difference in wins on and off court. It's 31 players for 30 teams because we didn't want to pick between Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant. (all stats are through Tuesday's games).
As you can see, Embiid trails only Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook and Paul Millsap while finishing one spot above LeBron James.
Paul, Westbrook and James do absolutely everything for their teams and it's not a surprise to see them near the top of any list involving on/off splits. Watch five minutes of the Hawks without Millsap on the floor and it becomes readily apparent just how vital he is for that team on both ends of the floor. He might not have the eye-popping box score statistics, but Millsap has long been a darling of advanced metrics (this is his third straight season inside the top 15 in RPM).
That's the sort of company Embiid is keeping, all while playing about 36 percent of his team's available minutes.
That he's played 36 percent of possible minutes is poetic justice for a player who is having one of the best per-36 seasons ever. And given his limited playing time, it's probably best to make sense of his impact on team performance by articulating his dominance through the per-36 lens.
Three to make his case:
The only rookie in NBA history to average more points per 36 minutes is Wilt Chamberlain in 1959-60. He won the MVP.
He's currently averaging 43.0 combined points, rebounds and blocks per 36 minutes. Since blocks became official in 1973-74, the most anyone has averaged is 42.5 by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1975-76. He won the MVP.
He's drawing 10.1 fouls per 36 minutes. The most by any player in the past two decades is 9.4 by Dwight Howard in 2010-11. He finished 2nd in MVP voting. (Another scary thought? Embiid is shooting 78 percent from the free throw line).
If The Process had not stepped foot on an NBA floor this season, the Sixers could very well be headed straight for the top pick in the draft. Yet here we are, more than halfway through the season, and the 76ers are closer to 8th in the East than they are to the cellar.
And it's all thanks to one of this season's five most valuable players.
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