By Spencer Agee | April 24, 2023
With Round 1 of the 2023 NBA Playoffs underway let’s dive into which players have the most playoff pressure on them to perform well and make a deep playoff run. There are a couple of players in the playoffs this year who’ve had impressive regular season performances but have always fallen short in the playoffs when it matters most.
An argument could be made that Chris Paul has the most pressure to perform well since he’s older and doesn’t have an NBA Championship yet. You could talk about
Nikola Jokic having a lot of pressure as well since he’s had some early playoff exits in the last several years after having MVP-caliber regular seasons. However, there have been reasons for these playoff disappointments such as injuries to the Nuggets’ other star players – Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. This year though the Denver Nuggets are healthy and will have home-court advantage throughout the playoffs.
However, the player that I think has the most pressure to succeed in the playoffs this year is Joel Embiid. Embiid, in my opinion, is most likely going to win the MVP award this year and having some playoff success will help prove to people that he truly deserves it. Embiid has never reached the conference finals in his career and to me that doesn’t sound like a player that deserves an MVP award. To make his first conference finals, Embiid and the 76ers will probably have to go through the Celtics, a team that has eliminated Embiid multiple times in the playoffs. Paired with his impressive regular season, a deep playoff run would make Embiid stand out among the other frontrunners and would squash some of the disrepect he’s been getting during the past few seasons.
Spencer Agee is a Senior Radio TV Film Major at UW Oshkosh
