The then-coach of a 1980s Atlanta Hawks team, Mike Fratello, described basketball IQ as, “seeing stuff better, understanding what people are trying to do. We’re making the right passes, the right decisions.” That about surmises it pretty well, don’t you think? These days, it’s a term that is used in almost every other sentence when talking about basketball players. While there is just about every metric to measure the different attributes of a player, basketball IQ is something that cannot be really measured.

As for former Philadelphia 76ers star, JJ Reddick; he believes that every player out there possesses basketball IQ. But they are of different levels. And there are some who use that to either their “advantage” or for “exploitation.” Having joined The Big Podcast with Shaq, Adam Lefkoe wastes no time picking Reddick’s brain about a player who shocked him with their basketball IQ. Purely because he wasn’t expecting it.

And Reddick’s pick? Joel Embiid. “I met Joel two weeks before free agency. We were at Steve Nash’s soccer charity event in New York… Once I started playing with him, I was like, “Holy sh*t! This guy just is smart,” he said.

“The level of intelligence required to be going into your dribble package at the elbow and time when you gather the ball right as the defender puts his hand out and go up and make the shot, like that’s basketball intelligence.” 

The timeline Reddick refers to is none other than Embiid’s 2016-17 season. Drafted in 2014, injuries delayed his debut. And when he finally took the floor, the 7-foot Cameroonian played just 31 games before a torn meniscus ended his season early. So, when JJ met Joel, he was basically a rookie in the NBA and just coming back from his latest injury.

Reddick, a veteran 76ers guard, famous for his sharpshooting skills, was highly impressed with Joel Embiid. The main reason for it was that he had no idea who this behemoth of a young guy was or what he was capable of. And to see all of it firsthand, so early on, was quite the experience. But then again, his basketball IQ was particularly on full display last season.

“Can’t score the points he scores without having a pretty high IQ”: former Sixers coach on Joel Embiid

The frontrunner for the MVP honor last season, Joel Embiid clinched the title after another brilliant and dominant season. Coaching the 76ers then was none other than Doc Rivers. And he was certain about one thing. “You can’t score the points that he scores without having a pretty high IQ. Because every team, they’re going to throw everything at him… You just know that going into it, and he still finds [a way].”

He was the league’s leading scorer for two seasons straight. In 2021-22, he scored a total of 2,079 points while averaging 30.6 points per game. In his MVP season, the Kansas product had 2,183 points and an average of 33.1 points. Not to mention, the 7x All-Star had some of the best numbers in his career in 2023. Of course, that was until he took the floor this season. But at the time, it was Embiid in all his glory.

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He also agreed with his coach about the nature of the game. “The game goes fast, but you’ve got to be able to process it,” he said. It wasn’t the reigning MVP trying to get attention on himself. Rather, he was simply stating a fact. Another factor, perhaps the most important one, was that Embiid is a self-declared film junkie. Not just watching the films of NBA greats but actually studying them.

Couple that with his own diverse and varied experience in the league and Embiid has a lot of great material on hand to develop his IQ on par with the elite of them.