Philadelphia 76ers big man Joel Embiid went buck wild Friday night at home against the Charlotte Hornets, albeit in a 133-132 overtime loss. Despite the team’s setback, the game stands as another proof why the Sixers’ center is regarded as among the best in the league today.
Embiid had a field day tearing apart the Hornets’ frontcourt, as he finished with 42 points on 11-for-18 shooting from the floor while also adding 18 boards, four assists, and four blocks in 29 minutes of court duty. The Hornets had no answer for Embiid, whom they repeatedly fouled just to stop him from wreaking more havoc. However, Embiid did plenty of damage from the charity stripe, where he knocked down 19 of his 223 freebies.
To further illustrate how rare the stat line Embiid put up against Charlotte, one has to walk all the way back to 1969 to find a similar performance from a Sixers player, per Justin Kobatko of Stat Muse.
Joel Embiid had 42 points and 18 rebounds tonight. The last @sixers player to match or exceed each of those totals in a single game was Billy Cunningham on Nov. 8, 1969.
That’s also Embiid's second 40-point, 20-rebound outing this season, which earned him a mention in the same sentence as Charles Barkley, also according to Kubatko.
Joel Embiid is the first @sixers player with multiple 40-point, 10-rebound games in a single season since Charles Barkley in 1990-91
Last week, Embiid put up 41 points and hauled down 13 rebounds in a 122-113 home win against the Los Angeles Clippers. He barely missed another 40-point, 10-rebound game when he posted 39 points and 17 rebounds on Nov. 3, when the Sixers took down the Detroit Pistons, also at Wells Fargo Center, 109-99.
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