In a theoretical playoff matchup with Philly, I really like Jonas Valanciunas’ theoretical ability to deal with Joel Embiid’s theoretical post game. He’s got a beeficity to him that a lot of centers these days don’t have. Sure, guarding him on the perimeter is a whole different story, but who even cares if Embiid splashes a few inefficient threes or tries his stupid little midrange jumpers? You can live with that. You can’t live with him dunking it every time down the court.
Most teams don’t have an Embiid, though. Valanciunas’ girth is not needed most nights, and his inability to defend in other ways limits his effectiveness, and thus his minutes. A shame, really, because he’s scoring better than ever this season. He looked like dangling dogdong against Milwaukee, which almost negatively affected my perception of him, but then I looked at his stats.
Now I’m back to asking the age-old question “why does Dwyane Casey hate him?”, except now it’s some guy named Nick Nurse doing the hating. And, this time, I already answered the question. His defense. God damn it. Why can’t he just be better on that end so we can see him for 35 minutes a night putting up regular 30-burgers? He needs to find a new team that doesn’t care about defense but needs a center (Cavaliers?) for real.