Will We (And The Rest Of The NBA) Ever Tire Of Joel Embiid’s Antics?


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Watching the second half of the Blazers-Sixers game last Thursday, I was quietly experiencing a great deal of empathy for Jusuf Nurkic, who is very good at basketball, and how badly it must suck for him to have to square off against someone like Joel Embiid, who is bigger, stronger, faster, younger, and just a superior all-around talent.

I thought about how demoralizing it must be to get pushed around helplessly in the post like that and how it must feel to come face to face with someone who is quantifiably better than you at what you do. Then, just out of curiosity, I took out my phone and checked his stat line. Nurkic already had something like 20-plus points and more than 10 rebounds by that point, which elicited an involuntary cartoon double-take.

The Blazers ended up overcoming an 18-point second-half deficit and made some big plays in crunchtime to seal the comeback victory, and afterward, Nurkic had a few extra words for Embiid.

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“He tries to be more famous than player,” Nurk said. “I respect him. He’s a good player. He’s not about tough. He’s a skill player who, you know, is getting tired, it looks like. And when you play defense on him and you play offense on him and you attack him, he getting tired more.”

Nurk was absolutely correct about him being fatigued. Despite knocking down a couple of huge three-pointers late in the fourth to keep the game in reach, Embiid looked totally gassed. Whether he’s tough is a different question entirely. Most rational people who have watched him play would likely agree that he is.

But he also takes great satisfaction in all the media attention which, together with his incessant chattering, gets under his opponents’ skin. Embiid is so relentlessly maddening precisely because he’s so good. If he was a mediocre talent, all his trash talk would evaporate right into the ether.

To be clear, there’s nothing innately wrong with any of it. He’s young, he’s having fun being in the spotlight, and he likes to entertain people. He’s basically Dwight Howard if people actually liked Dwight Howard. And he’s building an empire based almost entirely on a lack of giving a sh*t. He’s a marvel of self-promotion for the contemporary pro athlete.

In an era where so many of the so-called beefs around the league are laced with passive-aggressive undertones, Embiid’s blunt-force insults are refreshing in their childlike glee. In most cases, he’s practically incapable of subtlety. Instead, he skews sharply toward the opposite end of the spectrum and leverages social media in a way that adds a glorious new dimension to the whole spectacle.
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His ongoing spat with Hassan Whiteside was particularly amusing as it spilled over onto Instagram and featured some hilariously creative location updates. A back-and-forth with Andre Drummond followed a similar script, as did a recent beef with Karl Anthony-Towns.

But arguably the most amazing tenet of Embiid’s beef philosophy is that he not only doesn’t allow losing to curb his trash talk in any way, he somehow still manages to come out on top. Case in point: during a game against OKC last month, Embiid sarcastically waved goodbye to Steven Adams after the Thunder center fouled out – largely because of trying unsuccessfully to contain Embiid.

Westbrook later returned the favor by waving goodbye and telling him to go home after the Thunder had secured the win, naively and incorrectly believing that he’d gotten the last laugh. But Embiid, of course, immediately fired back, wryly calling out Westbrook’s 33 shot attempts, then pointing to the fact that he was already home in Philadelphia and couldn’t very well go anywhere.

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And because Embiid’s prime cuts are of an assorted USDA-approved variety, he likes to season them with a little sophomoric humor from time to time. He couldn’t resist making a “69” joke when asked last month how close he was to being back to 100 percent, and when Jalen Rose criticized him for being immature, he was locked and loaded with a hollow-point slug about Kobe’s 81-point game.

If we’re being honest, Rose had a point. “69” jokes are pretty lame and fall strictly under the purview of adolescent boys and adult dude-bros. It’d be one thing if they were delivered with at least a hint of irony, e.g. the way The Office so perfectly resurrected “That’s what she said.” But Joel Embiid is no Steve Carrell. So he’s gotta step his game up in that department.

To his credit, Embiid also understands that NBA beefs these days have an abbreviated shelf-life. He rarely hesitates to squash one when the opportunity presents itself (note how he hugged it out with both Drummond and LaVar Ball last month), although it’s most likely because he himself has a short attention span and is simply eager to move on to the next one. After all, there are more than 400 players in the NBA just ripe for the picking.

The only other lingering question is at what point does his act cross over into Popovichian self-parody? We’re entering uncharted territory with regard to the type of sustained petty mongering Embiid aspires to. Just as we’ve come to expect Pop’s trademark irascibility in every sideline interview, we’ve come to depend on Embiid to keep us sated with savory cuts.

We’re disappointed when he misses even the slightest opportunity for pettiness, no matter how minuscule the kernel, and rejoice when he retroactively fires up the grill. But we also know that the ideal diet consists of organically-grown products. Too much processed food simply isn’t good for the heart.

We don’t need Embiid as the overseer of an industrial-scale manufacturing conglomerate. We want Embiid the gentlemen farmer, plying only his choicest wares when he arrives at the market each Sunday. He’s got as long career ahead of him, and he can afford to be selective.

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