Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid was finally named the league’s Most Valuable Player. He edged out a pair of two-time MVP award winners, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic.
The MVP voting results showed that Embiid garnered 73 of a possible 100 first-place votes, while Jokic had 15 and Giannis got 12.
After finishing as the runner-up in voting in each of the past two seasons, Embiid finally earned the plum when his individual numbers soared in the late stretch while Jokic and the Nuggets struggled as a team.
Embiid averaged a league-best 33.1 points on 54.8 percent shooting, 10.2 rebounds, and 1.7 blocks per game this season. He propelled the Sixers to the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference, anchoring the NBA’s No. 8 ranked regular season defense. He is still in the process of trying to win his first championship, which would be Philadelphia’s first title since 1983.
The highlight of Embiid’s dominant home stretch was highlighted by a 52-point, 13-rebound game against the Boston Celtics on April 4. Aside from that, he also had a 10-game streak in March where he averaged a whopping 36.2 points, 9.5 rebounds, and 2.4 blocks.
To put it in simpler terms, he was the best player in the league in the final months, and he pushed the 76ers to become one of the top title contenders.
Humble beginnings
Before achieving the coveted title, Embiid had to go through a lot to get where he is now.
The big man, who was born in Yaoundé, Cameroon in 1994, loved volleyball and soccer, and his family was hoping he would get into pro volleyball. Standing at 6’9 and still growing, he then turned his interest to basketball at age 15. At the time, his basketball coach gave him a DVD of NBA legend and Nigerian Hakeem Olajuwon to learn about footwork and postgame moves, and Embiid watched it countless times so he could replicate it on the court.
Embiid was discovered by then-Milwaukee Bucks forward Luc Mbah a Moute at a youth basketball camp in his native city. Luc convinced Embiid to follow him and play high school basketball in Florida in 2010. He started to get attention at the NBA Africa’s Basketball Without Borders camp in South Africa in the following year.
He ranked sixth nationally in the class of 2013 and declared for the 2014 NBA draft. He had to undergo surgery on a broken navicular bone on his right foot and was projected to be out for four to six months but that didn’t stop the Sixers from selecting him as the third overall pick in the draft.
With his huge achievement, Embiid gives anyone from third-world countries who wish to overcome extraordinary odds a ton of hope.
The Cameroonian All-Star is only the second African to win MVP honors, following Nigerian-American Hakeem Olajuwon of the Houston Rockets who won the award in the 1993-94 season. Embiid admitted he never expected to make it to the NBA when he started playing.
“The probability of someone like me, you know who started playing basketball at 15, to get the chance to be the MVP of the league is, I’d say, negative zero. We don’t have a lot of opportunities back in Africa, in general, to get to this point,” he said.
“But, you know, improbable doesn’t mean impossible.”
Now that Embiid finally won the award he truly deserves, he should now focus on the bigger prize at stake: the NBA championship. Getting the MVP award is an amazing feat for any basketball player but some would argue that getting the Finals MVP holds more significance. If he can lead his team to the promised land, his season will turn out to be one of the greatest runs in NBA history.
