PHILADELPHIA — The battle between two of the NBA's most awe-inspiring giants was extremely one-sided but still very much enjoyable. Joel Embiid scored 70 points and led the Philadelphia 76ers to a win over Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs. Try as the new kid on the block did, the reigning MVP was simply too good to be contained.

But after the game, the superstar and the superstar in the making shared a strong, mutual respect. Wemby's 33 points on 10-19 shooting still made him an impactful presence in this game. Even if he couldn’t stop Embiid, who also tallied 18 rebounds and five assists, he showed that he's not so easy to contain, either.

“He's great, man,” Embiid said of Wembanyama. “I mean, he's got everything: size, skill…got everything. There’s nothing else to say. Bright future. He's already pretty good but once he develops and his body also catches on, it‘s going to be a lot of problems for a lot of guys in this league. He's extremely talented.”

As Nick Nurse observed, this was the first game where Embiid really had to work to shoot over his defender. That hard work paid off in a new franchise record for points in a single game. The 76ers star is no stranger to dribbling around his preferred spots before uncorking his smooth-release jump shot. However, against the 7-foot-4 giant with an eight-foot-long wingspan in front of him, he took some extra time to wind up. Even with Wemby crouched over to avoid getting plowed through, he could meet Embiid at the apex of his release.

Joel Embiid couldn’t hide the sense of amazement he felt toward Victor Wembanyama as he walked past him for the first time. “I walked past him and I was like, ‘I thought I was tall,’” he said. “The dude was just towering over me.” 

Wemby being on the losing end of one of the most dominant performances in NBA history — where Embiid became just the ninth player to reach 70 points and past Wilt Chamberlain's per-minute scoring mark — was surely not fun. The Spurs rookie indeed said that losing tarnished the night a bit for him. Still, he recognized the greatness on the other side and voiced his admiration.

“It would have been more fun in a win, of course. But it’s inspiring, especially offensively,” Wembanyama said, explaining that “a few years back it was more of a guards game. But now it's come back to a big man's game…Some guys are all around the league who can do a lot of stuff despite being very tall and it’s the way the game changes now. We’ve got to adapt.”

In fact, the Spurs rookie is one of those players that teams have to adapt to. To stand at his size — standing 7-foot-4 with an 8-foot-0 wingspan — with the skill to finish any type of lob and hit off-the-dribble three-pointers produces a game-breaking dichotomy. He can do just about everything San Antonio needs of him, from playmaking to rebounding to defending on and off the ball to scoring on his own.

Embiid isn’t too different. While not as long, he's still gargantuan and has mastered the art of the pull-up jump shot. The matchup between one of the titans of today and one of the most exciting titans of tomorrow exemplified the positionless nature of modern NBA basketball, where a handful of big men aren’t confined to just being the muscle of their operations.

Thinking of what it means to him to hear Wemby call his game “inspirational,” Embiid reflected on how he viewed Kobe Bryant, whose signature game also occurred on January 22.

“It's great,” Embiid said. “Even though I started playing late, from the time I started playing, Kobe was my guy. He's the reason why I started playing basketball — and it's funny because on the same night, he had 81. That was my favorite player. So, when I started, those were the guys that I was looking up to and they were doing all this. If he says it's inspiring, I hope in a couple years — hopefully when I don't have to guard him and I'm out of the league — he's able to do the same thing and, you know, go out and break all these records and possibly break Wilt's record of a hundred points.”

If anyone will be able to challenge the most famous record in basketball right now, it's Joel Embiid. For the future, hitching those hopes to Victor Wembanyama is arguably the most sensible. The two big men belonging to opposite conferences mean there can only be up to two matchups between them in any given season. But when it happens, as this game demonstrated, viewers should have their “oohs” and “aahs” at the ready.