Joel Embiid is one of the most dominant players in the NBA today, and there isn’t a whole lot that he can’t do on the basketball court.
Bill Simmons has been highly impressed with what he has been seeing with Embiid and said on “The Bill Simmons Podcast” that the Sixers big is a more complete offensive player than some of the great big men in history.
“To me, Embiid has reached this point where his f***ing offensive toolbox that he has now, his face-up stuff, his ability to overpower people,” Simmons said. “I was thinking about watching late 80s (Patrick) Ewing when he really had his knees. He was just this awesome, could face up, could hit long shots, could hit the little jump hook, and he had this whole package, it’s like, ‘Wow, Ewing, he’s really got it together.’ To me, Embiid is just offensively better than Ewing was, and Ewing was one of the 40 best players of all time.”
That is very high praise, and Simmons went a step further after this, stating that Embiiid is a more complete offensive player than Shaquille O’Neal.
“I’m not ready to go there with Hakeem (Olajuwon), but I think he’s a better offensive player than David Robinson was. I think he had more stuff to his game than Shaq ever did. Shaq was a little more overpowering, but Embiid brings more to the table.”
(starts at 57:38 mark):
Embiid certainly does bring more to the table. For starters, he actually has an outside shot, while Shaq was a horrendous shooter. Embiid has hit 440 three-pointers in his career at a solid clip of 34.0%, while Shaq only converted 1 of his 22 attempts. It doesn’t get much better when you look at the disparity in their free throw percentages, as Embiid, for his career, has shot 81.7% from the line while Shaq was at 52.7%.
When you look at the scoring accomplishments during their respective careers, Shaq won two scoring titles to Embiid one, but the Sixers big man is leading the league in PPG this season, so he could equal the Hall of Famer in a few weeks. A comparison of their career averages shows that Shaq was the more efficient scorer of the two, in general, as he averaged 23.7 PPG, 10.9 RPG, 2.5 APG, 0.6 SPG, and 2.3 BPG while shooting 58.2% from the field. Embiid, meanwhile, is at 27.1 PPG, 11.2 RPG, 3.4 APG, 0.9 SPG, and 1.7 BPG for his career and shoots 49.8% from the field.
Joel Embiid Is The More Complete Scorer, But Shaquille O’Neal Was More Dominant
Embiid has more ways to score for sure, but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is putting the ball in the hoop. That’s what wins you games, and O’Neal won at the highest level, thanks to his dominance as a scorer.
He led the Los Angeles Lakers to that historic three-peat and then won another title with the Miami Heat while Embiid is yet to even reach the Eastern Conference Finals. O’Neal, at his absolute peak, was just an unstoppable force, and even if you knew what he was going to do, there was no way to slow him down. He is widely regarded as one of the two most dominant players of all time, along with Wilt Chamberlain, and it is unlikely that anyone will ever come close to these two icons in that regard.
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