For the second time, the NBA could have a global participant as its scoring champion.
It would be the second time in as a few years.
Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid — who was born in Cameroon — is on the cusp of turning into a back-to-back scoring champion, although he and Dallas’ Luka Doncic may take that race right down to the wire.
Embiid opened up a little bit of respiration room on Sunday, when he had 28 factors within the 76ers’ loss to Milwaukee whereas Doncic — who’s from Slovenia — scored 28 within the Mavericks’ time beyond regulation loss to Atlanta.
Embiid now has 2,110 factors in 64 video games; that’s a median of 32.97 per recreation. Doncic has 2,096 factors, additionally in 64 video games; that’s a median of 32.75 per recreation.
Philadelphia has 4 video games remaining, Dallas has three. No NBA video games had been being performed Monday, with the league taking off the day of the NCAA males’s Division I championship recreation.
Portland’s Damian Lillard is third within the scoring race at 32.2 factors per recreation. He’ll end at that common, as a result of the Trail Blazers have shut him down for the remainder of the season provided that they’re out of playoff competition.
Technically, Lillard may nonetheless transfer forward of Embiid and Doncic, however it’s extremely unlikely — even when Embiid and Doncic each play in a recreation and are held scoreless, their averages nonetheless wouldn’t dip under Lillard’s.
This might be the closest scoring race in additional than a decade. The final time the scoring title was determined by lower than a half-point per recreation was 2011-12, when Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant edged the Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant by 0.17 factors per recreation; Durant averaged 28.03, Bryant averaged 27.86.
Embiid held off Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo to guide the league in factors per recreation final season to develop into the primary official worldwide scoring champion. Dominique Wilkins additionally gained a scoring title; he was born in France however performed for the U.S. and is taken into account an American participant.
(It needs to be famous that Embiid’s common of 30.6 factors final season was barely forward of LeBron James’ 30.3 per recreation, however James didn’t formally qualify for the NBA leaderboard as a result of he didn’t seem in sufficient video games.)
WHO’S IN
East: Milwaukee, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland and New York have secured playoff spots. Brooklyn, Miami and Atlanta have secured no worse than a play-in match berth and Toronto is locked into the play-in match. Chicago and Orlando nonetheless may make the play-in area, although the one approach the Magic get there and bump the Bulls out is that if they go 4-0 whereas Chicago goes 0-4.
West: Denver, Memphis and Sacramento have secured playoff spots. Phoenix, the Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State can’t do worse than making the play-in match, and all enter the ultimate week of the common season in place to safe playoff berths.
WHO’S OUT
Detroit, Charlotte, Indiana and Washington have been eradicated within the East; Houston, San Antonio and Portland have been eradicated within the West.
RACE FOR WEMBY
While we gained’t know till May 16 who will get the No. 1 decide within the draft — spoiler alert, until some unbelievable commerce occurs, the lottery winner will choose Victor Wembanyama — we do know there’s a 42% probability that the highest decide will go to Detroit, Houston or San Antonio.
The Pistons, Rockets and Spurs are assured of ending within the three backside spots of the league this season. But there’s nonetheless some odds that may be “improved,” in that the workforce that finishes with the worst document is assured of not leaving the lottery with worse than the No. 5 draft decide.
Detroit is nearly assured of getting the worst document; the Pistons are 16-62, effectively “ahead” of Houston (19-60) and San Antonio (20-58).
There’s loads of jostling that can occur this week for lottery odds as effectively. Charlotte is locked into ending with the fourth-worst document, however the fifth- by eighth-worst spots are all up within the air — with Portland, Indiana, Washington and Orlando all at present having both 33 or 34 wins. And the more severe a workforce’s document is, the higher probability it has of successful the lottery and the Wembanyama sweepstakes.
3 WITH 32?
Should Embiid, Doncic and Lillard all end with averages of at the very least 32 factors per recreation, it’ll make NBA historical past.
There by no means has been a season the place three gamers had such a median. There have been two gamers averaging at the very least 32 factors on 4 earlier events — Elgin Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain did it in 1960-61, 1961-62 and 1962-63; Bryant and Allen Iverson did it in 2005-06.
0 WITH 60
Unless Milwaukee goes 4-0 this week, there gained’t be a 60-win workforce within the NBA this season.
And that’s comparatively uncommon.
It didn’t occur throughout Milwaukee’s 2020-21 championship season, when there was a 72-game schedule — and no workforce had a successful share that yr that may have been equal to a 60-22 “regular” common season anyway.
After that, the latest time there wasn’t a 60-win workforce (or equal win share in a shortened season) was 2000-01, when San Antonio went 58-24 to guide the league. Before that, one has to go all the way in which again to 1978-79, when Philadelphia went 54-28 to prime the standings.
