It’s Embiid vs. Doncic for scoring title in NBA’s final week

For the second time, the NBA will have an international playeras its scoring champion.

It will be the second time in as many years.

Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid — who was born in Cameroon — is onthe cusp of becoming a back-to-back scoring champion, though he andDallas’ Luka Doncic might take that race down to the wire.

Embiid opened up a bit of breathing room on Sunday, when he had28 points in the 76ers’ loss to Milwaukee while Doncic — who isfrom Slovenia — scored 28 in the Mavericks’ overtime loss toAtlanta.

Embiid now has 2,110 points in 64 games; that’s an average of32.97 per game. Doncic has 2,096 points, also in 64 games; that’san average of 32.75 per game.

Philadelphia has four games remaining, Dallas has three. No NBAgames were being played Monday, with the league taking off the dayof the NCAA men’s Division I championship game.

Portland’s Damian Lillard is third in the scoring race at 32.2points per game. He’ll finish at that average, because the TrailBlazers have shut him down for the rest of the season given thatthey are out of playoff contention.

Technically, Lillard could still move ahead of Embiid andDoncic, but it’s highly unlikely — even if Embiid and Doncic bothplay in a game and are held scoreless, their averages stillwouldn’t dip below Lillard’s.

This could be the closest scoring race in more than a decade.The last time the scoring title was decided by less than ahalf-point per game was 2011-12, when Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durantedged the Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant by 0.17 points per game;Durant averaged 28.03, Bryant averaged 27.86.

Embiid held off Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo to lead theleague in points per game last season to become the first officialinternational scoring champion. Dominique Wilkins also won ascoring title; he was born in France but played for the U.S. and isconsidered an American player.

(It should be noted that Embiid’s average of 30.6 points lastseason was barely ahead of LeBron James’ 30.3 per game, but Jamesdid not officially qualify for the NBA leaderboard because he didnot appear in enough games.)

WHO’S IN

East: Milwaukee, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland and New Yorkhave secured playoff spots. Brooklyn, Miami and Atlanta havesecured no worse than a play-in tournament berth and Toronto islocked into the play-in tournament. Chicago and Orlando still couldmake the play-in field, though the only way the Magic get there andbump the Bulls out is if they go 4-0 while Chicago goes 0-4.

West: Denver, Memphis and Sacramento have secured playoff spots.Phoenix, the Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State can’t do worsethan making the play-in tournament, and all enter the final week ofthe regular season in position to secure playoff berths.

WHO’S OUT

Detroit, Charlotte, Indiana and Washington have been eliminatedin the East; Houston, San Antonio and Portland have been eliminatedin the West.

RACE FOR WEMBY

While we won’t know until May 16 who gets the No. 1 pick in thedraft — spoiler alert, unless some incredible trade happens, thelottery winner will select Victor Wembanyama — we do know there’s a42% chance that the top pick will go to Detroit, Houston or SanAntonio.

The Pistons, Rockets and Spurs are assured of finishing in thethree bottom spots of the league this season. But there’s stillsome odds that can be “improved,” in that the team that finisheswith the worst record is assured of not leaving the lottery withworse than the No. 5 draft pick.

Detroit is almost assured of having the worst record; thePistons are 16-62, well “ahead” of Houston (19-60) and San Antonio(20-58).

There’s a lot of jostling that will happen this week for lotteryodds as well. Charlotte is locked into finishing with thefourth-worst record, but the fifth- through eighth-worst spots areall up in the air — with Portland, Indiana, Washington and Orlandoall currently having either 33 or 34 wins. And the worse a team’srecord is, the better chance it has of winning the lottery and theWembanyama sweepstakes.

3 WITH 32?

Should Embiid, Doncic and Lillard all finish with averages of atleast 32 points per game, it’ll make NBA history.

There never has been a season where three players had such anaverage. There have been two players averaging at least 32 pointson four previous occasions — Elgin Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain didit in 1960-61, 1961-62 and 1962-63; Bryant and Allen Iverson did itin 2005-06.

0 WITH 60

Unless Milwaukee goes 4-0 this week, there won’t be a 60-winteam in the NBA this season.

And that’s relatively rare.

It didn’t happen during Milwaukee’s 2020-21 championship season,when there was a 72-game schedule — and no team had a winningpercentage that year that would have been equivalent to a 60-22“regular” regular season anyway.

After that, the most recent time there wasn’t a 60-win team (orequivalent win percentage in a shortened season) was 2000-01, whenSan Antonio went 58-24 to lead the league. Before that, one has togo all the way back to 1978-79, when Philadelphia went 54-28 to topthe standings.