Joel Embiid Has Room for Improvement After Sixers Beat Blazers

Joel Embiid wants to be better even after leading his team to a major victory over the Blazers.

Sitting at his locker following an intense comeback victory from a 21-point deficit against the Portland Trail Blazers, Joel Embiid noted that he can “be better.”

The Philadelphia 76ers center wrapped up Friday’s game with nearly 40 points. One more point, and he would’ve scored 40 for the 12th time this year. Despite missing that mark, Embiid’s been on quite the scoring tear lately, averaging 35 points shooting at a 55 percent clip since returning from the All-Star break.

Leading the Sixers to a 5-3 record in the games he’s played since the late February return to action, Embiid’s maintained his status as one of the league’s MVP favorites.

Still, he’s not satisfied with his game overall.

“I can be better,” said Embiid. “I missed a bunch of free throws, you know, had a couple of turnovers. I can always be better.”

The Sixers did a decent job of keeping turnovers low on Friday night, losing control of the ball just ten times. Embiid was responsible for four of those mishaps. Then from the charity stripe, the big man uncharacteristically missed five of his 18 free throws. As an 85 percent free throw shooter, Embiid’s 72 percent from the foul line was a below-average night for the big man. 

“I’ve said it [before], I think I'm unguardable,” the big man continued. “It's all about using that, trying to make my teammates better. With that comes a lot of double and triple teams every single game, so it's about how do I want to make my teammates better every game. It's not just about offense, defensively, we got to get better.”

For the most part, Philadelphia’s defense struggled against Portland on Friday. As the Blazers made over 50 percent of their shots and knocked down 42 percent of their threes on six more attempts than the Sixers, Philadelphia can definitely be better in that area.

While the 76ers have proven time and time again that they have the ability to climb back from any deficit and pull off wins in the end, Embiid wants to make sure the team fine-tunes its concerns before the playoffs as they have goals to go further than they’ve been over the last few seasons. 

Justin Grasso covers the Philadelphia 76ers for All76ers, a Sports Illustrated channel. You can follow him for live updates on Twitter: @JGrasso_.