The Whiteboard: Joel Embiid, James Harden are embracing each other’s strengths

James Harden and Joel Embiid have the Philadelphia 76ers rolling, becoming the devastating pick-and-roll combination they looked like on paper.

Time has a way of getting warped in the NBA. Days march ahead, 24 hours at a time but somehow the past feels like it’s getting exponentially farther away. There are already rumors about James Harden’s interest in returning to the Houston Rockets but it’s barely been two years since Houston trade him to Brooklyn. He’s only been a member of the Philadelphia 76ers for just over 13 months and hasn’t even played a full 82 games for them yet.

What I mean to say is that it was only this time last year that NBA fans and analysts were beginning to wrestle with the question of how Harden and Joel Embiid might work together. On paper, they were a formidable pick-and-roll combination. But on the court, Harden had largely abandoned the pick-and-roll over his final seasons in Houston, becoming an isolation beast with four stationary shooters spacing the floor around him. Embiid had retreated in the other direction — to the post. In 2020-21, a career-low percentage of his 2-pointers were assisted on; he led the league in post-ups per game, nearly doubling up anyone else in the league, using nearly 40 percent of his possessions in the post.

Again, they had the potential to be a dynamic pick-and-roll combination but it was mostly hypothetical. A year later, it’s become a reality.

James Harden and Joel Embiid are destroying the NBA with the pick-and-roll

Both players have adapted to accommodate each other’s strengths but it’s much easier to see the way this partnership has transformed Embiid. This season, 61.3 percent of his 2-pointers have been assisted on, by far the highest number of his career.

Embiid leads the league in possessions used as the screener in the pick-and-roll and the percentage of his possessions that have been used in post-ups has fallen by more than 10 percentage points — 28.0 percent to 16.6. And almost all of that is through the pick-and-roll dynamic with Harden. Through 52 games together, Harden has already assisted Embiid 211 times — 75 more times than the next most frequent assist combination this season, Nikola Jokic to Aaron Gordon.

The 76ers often set up their pick-and-roll with Embiid screening very high, out at the top of the arc. In this arrangement, they’re leveraging space to stretch out the defensive rotation and open the middle of the floor. When the pocket pass is available that gives Embiid space to load up and use his maneuverability to get to the basket.

I think this play is especially important because even though an is assist recorded, this is still an incredibly active assisted 2-pointer for Embiid. He’s not just catching a lob or standing still and spotting up.

It’s a case where the 76ers can use the value of the pick-and-roll but still keep Embiid active in creating the scoring opportunities, something that seems (from a distance) like it could be very important to his confidence and emotional engagement. It’s possible that any initial hesitancy on his part to embrace the pick-and-roll more fully earlier in his career could have been about a desire to avoid becoming a bystander in Philly’s offense — something that is definitely not the case in this partnership with Harden.

These aren’t just sets that create catch-and-finish opportunities for Embiid. They are still putting him in creation scenarios, just in more advantageous ones against a scrambling defense, a switched defender, a better position when he makes the catch, or even all three.

The other interesting thing about that pick-and-roll is how rarely it’s used to create a scoring opportunity for Harden himself. So far this season, he’s finishing about 6.3 possessions per game as the ball-handler in the pick-and-roll, about the same as complementary creators like Jamal Murray and Bradley Beal.

If he doesn’t get the pocket pass to Embiid, he’s usually just forcing the switch so he can slow play things into an isolation against a slower big man or a smaller guard he can backdown and shoot over the top of.

Harden is still getting plenty of isolation opportunities — they make up 30.3 percent of his possessions this season, just slightly less than his 2020-21 season split between Houston and Brooklyn. But the isolations seem to be coming later in the shot clock more often, after some other initial action and first tries to create a high-quality look for Embiid or someone else. This season, 31 percent of his shot attempts have come in the last seven seconds of the shot clock, up from 18.1 percent during his last full season in Houston.

Embiid has adjusted where and how he’s getting his scoring opportunities. In general, Harden has adapted by simply moving Embiid to the top of the priority list and allowing his preferred offensive scenarios to become the default Plan B.

Perhaps the best indicator of how successful this change has been, is to roll it all up into one number. According to the NBA’s CourtOptix stats, Embiid is screening for Harden an average of 21.1 times per game and the 76ers are scoring at a rate of 1.21 points per possession anytime he screens for Harden. That’s essentially as effective as the legendary Draymond Green-Steph Curry pick-and-roll combination, except the 76ers are using it three times as often without losing any of the effectiveness.

The 76ers will have to prove that they can sustain this into the playoffs and that their counters are effective enough to keep the offense moving if defenses tighten up around this. But right now, all those questions about whether Harden and Embiid could co-exist feel a million years old.

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