The Day Has Finally Arrived For The MVP Battle We've All Been Waiting For

Mitchell Leff. Getty Images.

The day has finally arrived. One of the more anticipated matchups of the NBA's homestretch is going down tonight in Philly, and you could make the case that a certain MVP award could be in the balance. While I don't think any individual game truly decides this award, it's hard to argue tonight's matchup of Jokic vs Embiid won't have an impact. As I write this I'm fairly sure the injury reports aren't out yet, and I'm assuming Embiid and Jokic both play. The Sixers did play yesterday in ORL and Doc did say this over the weekend

and I'm really hoping tonight is not one of those nights for Embiid. If Harden wants to sit, fine. This game isn't about him. The people want to see Jokic vs Embiid. We didn't get to see it in the November meeting (Embiid didn't play) so we as fans deserve this. The MVP race is still tight as hell, both teams need as many wins as possible right now, and frankly we've been talking about it for months that it would be super lame to not get a single Embiid/Jokic matchup this season. As it stands per the latest MVP ladder, here's where we're at heading into tonight

I think it's fair to say that Jokic may have started to pull away a little bit, so this would be a great opportunity for Embiid to show up big time and reassert himself. He did have 35/16/7 which is pretty fucking massive in their OT win over the Magic yesterday, but he did shoot just 9-28. In fact, over his last 7 games Embiid is only shooting 40/24% from the floor. He's still averaging 30/12/3.6 so he's obviously still been effective, but a good shooting night combined with a win could go a long way in my opinion. It doesn't feel like it'll take much for people to not Jokic back to back MVPs, so this is a big matchup for Embiid to show up for. If he's able to, the race is 10000% going to get even tighter and it's already nuts. 

Things didn't exactly work out well for the Sixers the last time they had one of these huge matchups at home, but I see tonight in a completely different light. There'd no bad blood between these two teams. Jokic and Embiid don't have beef, far from it. All they do is give the other respect. But what this game will be is just more ammo for either side in the never ending NBA Twitter debate of who is the MVP between these two. Nuggets fans point to how Jokic is better literally at everything outside of scoring. Sixers fans point to record/seeding (?) and the fact that Embiid is dominant and can only be fouled. That's why a head to head matchup is so important. If one of these guys shows up and dominates the other in victory, it's hard to argue that won't matter. When we get these late season matchups, they always matter in terms of MVP.

So please join me in crossing your fingers and hoping everyone is active tonight. If so, it should be an awesome game.