Why Joel Embiid is the greatest scorer in NBA history

Why Joel Embiid is the greatest scorer in NBA history originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

Joel Embiid was drafted nine-and-a-half years ago, but due to injuries, he just reached his 400^th career NBA regular season game Monday night against Washington. It was a career game – 48 points, 11 rebounds, and six assists – and his numbers would have been far higher if the Wizards had put up enough of a fight that Nick Nurse needed to play him at all in the fourth quarter.

It is fair to say that in spite of missing so much time in his career, Embiid is one of the best players of his era; an MVP award, two scoring titles, six All-Star teams, five All-NBA selections, and three All-Defensive selections in seven-plus seasons is about as good as it gets.

But what if we told you he’s the best in the history of the NBA in one major metric?

Now that Embiid has reached this nice round number of games, we decided to take a look at where he stands compared to some of the greats over the past 40 seasons.

Dating back to the start of the 1982-1983 NBA season, Embiid has the fourth-most points among all players through 400 games, with 10,913 according to Sportsradar. The three players in front of him? Michael Jordan (13,087), Alex English (11,306), and LeBron James (10,949).

Pretty heady stuff. But when you consider that Embiid reached that mark playing fewer minutes than anyone in the top 50 on this list, it becomes even more impressive.

Looking at career points per game (minimum 300 games), Embiid ranks sixth at 27.282, behind Jordan (30.1), Wilt Chamberlain (30.1), Luka Doncic (27.7), Elgin Baylor (27.4), and Kevin Durant (27.292). He and Wilt are the only centers in the top 20 in points per game.

So, to this point in his career, he’s one of the best scorers of all-time right? Wrong.

He’s the best scorer of all-time, and here’s why.

We mentioned how few minutes Embiid has played to amass his scoring total. There’s a metric called points per 36 minutes (or Pts/36) that measures how many points a player would score if he played 36 minutes a game. It’s an analytic way of measuring points per minute, rather than per game, since not everyone plays the same amount of time.

Using Pts/36, Joel Embiid is far and away the NBA’s all-time leader. He holds a lead of nearly two full points on Doncic for second.

(courtesy: Sportsradar, min. 325 GP)

Amazing.

His career points total almost certainly won’t approach anywhere near the top 20 by the time Embiid is ready to hang up his size-17 sneakers. He’s four months shy of 30 years old, and has yet to crack 11,000 points. He’d have to play another 500 games at 30 points a game to crack the top 20. To think he could score at this rate for another eight seasons is unrealistic.

But for now, and as long as he continues punishing the league, Joel Embiid is the most efficient scorer in the history of the sport.