Big men renaissance: Jokic, Embiid named NBA Players of the Month

Slowly, but surely, superstar big men are coming back in bunches in the NBA spotlight.

That fact was once again reaffirmed as the Denver Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic and the Philadelphia 76ers’ Joel Embiid were named as the league’s Players of the Month (December-January) for the Western and Eastern Conferences, respectively.

Jokic, already one of the greatest passing big men of all time, led the Nuggets’ potent offense to averages of 26.8 points, 11.8 rebounds, 8.6 assists, and 1.8 steals per game.

Embiid, meanwhile, is right up there with Jokic in contention for the best big man in the league today with norms of 28.3 points, 11.1 rebounds, 2.8 assists, and 1.3 blocks per game.

Despite a very weak start to the season where the Nuggets went 1-4, Jokic consistently led the team’s offense, and for a time, was even the league’s leading assist man after starting with 6 straight double-digit assist games.

In that span, he tallied his career-high in dimes with an eye-popping triple-double of 19 points, 18 assists, and 12 rebounds in Denver’s first win of the season against the Houston Rockets.

Although his assist numbers have gone back down to “normal,” Jokic recently tied his career-high in points with a 47-point bomb against Utah Jazz and their former two-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert.

As Jokic runs wild as one of best offensive big men in the NBA, Embiid meanwhile, has consistently held the Sixers’ fort down with elite two-way play, en route to an East-best 15-6 record despite the team being extremely depleted due to positive virus tests.

In his last 10 games, Embiid has even stirred up early MVP conversations with 2 40-point games and 4 30-point games with a good helping of rebounds and defensive stats every time in that span.

Both Jokic and Embiid are clearly playing with a heightened sense of urgency as both the Nuggets and the Sixers have repeatedly fallen short in the playoffs after great regular season campaigns.

Last season, the Nuggets simply ran out of gas in the Western Conference Finals against eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers after coming back from back-to-back 1-3 deficits in the previous two rounds.

Meanwhile, the Sixers failed to register even a single playoff win as they got swept by the Boston Celtics in the first round due to the untimely injury of All-Star playmaker Ben Simmons.

With both Jokic and Embiid just hitting the prime of their respective careers, expect nothing but more games with otherworldly stats from both men in the years to come. – Rappler.com