You Can See The Exact Moment Joel Embiid Realized ‘Raising The Cat’ Could Be A Shot At Karl Anthony-Towns


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Joel Embiid got the best of Karl-Anthony Towns a few times over the last two days. First, Embiid and the Sixers took down Towns and the Timberwolves in overtime on Tuesday night, 118-112. One day later and the two sparred in an Instagram comment section, with Embiid posting something harmless, Towns replying and saying the picture and caption were trash, and Embiid roasting Towns’ defense.

The two are friends, so it’s not like this was malicious or anything. But it’s still really easy to take Embiid’s caption, in which he said “we ended up raising the cat,” as trash talk considering Towns’ nickname of KAT.

We’ll get to the origins of the phrase in the second, but as this video from a media session on Thursday shows, it doesn’t seem like Embiid even considered that phrasing things that way could have been taken as a slight against Towns.

Right around the 34-second mark, Embiid says “We ended up raising the cat. I don’t know if he understood the meaning of actually raising the cat, maybe he thought it was about him.” At that point he made a face that made it look like he had something of an a-ha moment where he realized that his post could have been misconstrued.

But raise the cat is a movement that swept the Sixers last season and has stuck around this year. It stemmed from a Philly sports fan named Dennis Grove doing it after Sixer wins, which led to more and more fans doing it to the point that it became a staple on local broadcasts of their games and in the arena. Even noted cat owner Ben Simmons decided to get in on the fun, and shirts were made with proceeds going to animal-focused charities in Philadelphia.

It is very easy to interpret Embiid randomly saying “raising the cat” after besting Towns as a way that the big man who is known for trolling opponents is taking a shot. But as his semi-surprised reaction seems to denote, the thought didn’t cross his mind until way after he posted the picture on social media.

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