Basketball is not a sport, it's a way of life.

Embiid indeed, 200 just doesn't hit the same, Adam Silver is gold...

First and foremost, don’t adjust your television sets, I have again deviated from our regularly scheduled programming. But with this being playoff time, my being relegated back to the couch, and a powerful feeling of entitlement to do what I want with my newsletter (did that sound as tough as it did in my head?), I will likely be varying release dates and upping content. *fingers crossed* So, hopefully this finds you in a receptive mood. If not, just set it aside until your regular Sunday reading. As always, thank you so much for your time and your support, it really does mean a lot. Now, enough of the prattle…actually, we all know there will definitely be more prattle, but let’s talk basketball.

QUICK HITS

• When it comes to Joel Embiid and his history of underwhelming performance in the playoffs, what was once a growing sentiment said in hushed tones has recently become a din through the crowd. Over the last few years, I could be counted in that audience of dissenters, as I have had no qualms voicing my opinions on Embiid’s often lackluster postseason play. But nothing silences doubt like excellence, and last night Joel Embiid just offered us all a warm glass of shut the hell up. In scoring his playoff career-high 50-point performance against the Knicks on Thursday, in a must-win for the 76ers as they entered the game down 0-2 in the series, Embiid very well may have put on the best performance in a vital game 3 in NBA history—remember, no one has ever come back for being down 0-3 in the NBA playoffs. The Sixers center has now become the seventh player ever to hang fifty in the third game of a playoff series, but he is only the second player to do so when his team was trailing 0-2, joining Rick Barry, who dropped 55 against Wilt’s Sixers in the 1967 Finals before his Warriors eventually succumbed to the Big Dipper and Philadelphia in six.

  While Barry may have outscored Embiid in his performance, he did so while attempting an eye-popping 48 field goals, going just 22 of 48 (45.8%) from the field in his team’s victory—Embiid has attempted a total of 53 field goals in the series against NY. For his part, Embiid now has the second-highest field goal percentage among this entire group, going 13 of 19 from the field (68.4%), including a Curryian five for seven from distance and 19 of 21 from the stripe. While last night’s performance began with an emotionally charged Embiid playing his heel role a bit too well, complete with too much griping at the officials and a slew of questionable plays, including an attempt to bring down Mitchell Robinson by the legs while he himself lay on the floor, by the third quarter, in which he exploded for 18 points in the period, Embiid asserted himself in a way that reminded us all just how damn unstoppable he can be. To his credit, Embiid’s 2024 postseason play, particularly considering he just had MCL surgery 11 weeks ago, has been gritty and impressive, with him having far and away his most dominant offensive run. Through the first three games, Embiid is averaging 37.7 points, 8.7 rebounds, and 5.3 assists, while shooting 37.5% from distance on eight attempts a night. Now, it’s only been three games, Embiid had a noticeable limp at times in the second half, and both the lower rebounding numbers (he averaged 11 during the regular season) and the volume of three-point attempts (he attempted just 3.6 during the year) let you know that he’s mixing it up less than a fully healthy version of himself. And despite the impressive play, I still don’t see Embiid’s Sixers being capable of a deep playoff push. But for a player who needs a statement postseason run, this is the level of individual play that may not silence us critics, but it’ll at least force us to lower our volume some.

• Two weeks ago, I talked about Steph Curry as an impact event in the NBA, and while there are a million different metrics highlighting just how much he has changed the way that the entire league approaches shooting, perhaps no stat is more stunningly indicative of this than the sheer number of players who made more than 200 threes this season. Before Steph entered the league and cracked the style of play wide open—Harden’s Rockets deserve some acknowledgment here as well, but Steph’s level of winning really calcified the new shooting concepts as something aspirational in a manner that Harden and the Rockets couldn’t—the most shooters to hit 200 or more threes in a season were five, which occurred only twice – in '97 and '05. This year, 22 different players reached the 200 threes mark. Steph made three-point shooting cool and effective, to the point of it feeling like we now need an overcorrection to a more relative norm. This drastic change in players shooting threes has meant the average number of long-range attempts league-wide has gone from 18.1 as recently as the '09 season to 35.1 this year. The 35.1 is the second most threes attempted per game in league history (35.2 in '22). All of this amounts to players firing more threes than ever, and that in turn has fostered far more skilled shooting from range. The league average of the top 25 three-point shooters this year was a healthy 39%, at just about 7.9 attempts per game collectively. In that '09 season, it was just 5.4 attempts at an average of 37.7%. Of course, Steph led all players this season with 11.8 attempts per game, but the player with the least attempts in the top 25 was Grayson Allen at a still healthy rate of 5.9. The league has changed, shooting standards are being felled as players strip-mine the record books with an impressive combination of volume and precision. Y’all know I’m old school, so I do hope we soon see a perimeter player that feasts in the midrange with such excellence that others begin reexploring the space. And I believe we will, because the pendulum always swings back (at least mostly). But for now, I can still appreciate watching all these special shooters doing special things.

• For anyone who thought that Caleb Martin’s impressive performance in the Eastern Conference Finals last season was merely one of those incredible runs from a man playing like he’s possessed, the Heat forward’s stellar night Wednesday put everyone on notice, when it comes to the Boston Celtics during playoff time, he’s more of a soul snatcher than one of the corporeal kind. For those keeping score at home, following his 21-point outing Tuesday, Martin has now scored in double figures in eight of his last nine games against the Celtics in the postseason. Martin just loves to see the Celtic green lined up against him in the spring. In three playoffs series against Boston—a span of 16 games to this point—Martin is averaging 13.1 points, on 65.7% from the field and 45.3% from distance. Those numbers stand in stark contrast to Martin’s averages against Boston in the regular season since joining the Heat, where in eight games he’s averaged just 8.4 points on 39.5% and 34.5% respectively. Boston’s game plan of allowing Miami’s wings all the perimeter space they would like may ultimately prove to be the right strategic decision, but where Martin is concerned, it may be wise to stop allowing him to gain his confidence over the course of the game as he knocks down open look after open look. Four of Martin’s 12 best individual scoring games in his five-year career have come against the Celtics in the playoffs over the last two seasons (21 – 5/27/23; 21 – 4/24/24; 25 – 5/19/23; 26 – 5/29/23).