Joel Embiid‘s bid to recruit LeBron James to Philadelphia on Twitter last week started out innocently and ended in disappointment. In the process, a social media star was born.
At the start of free agency on July 1st, Embiid made his pitch to LeBron on Twitter:
@KingJames hey bro hope you're having a good day…… Want to join us in philly?? Peace
— Joel-Hans Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) July 1, 2014
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Embiid decided to have some fun with the entire process. A lot of fun in fact. The next day, after not hearing back from LeBron, he went with a meme to try and get his attention:
Been a day.. still waiting for @KingJames to answer me like (TAPE DELAY GUYS) how can you do that to me? @espn pic.twitter.com/LkeGQLrszQ
— Joel-Hans Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) July 3, 2014
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At this point, Embiid got a bit worried about whether he was tampering:
I hope i'm not gonna get fined already with those Lebron's tweets is it legal to recruit over twitter @NBA ?
— Joel-Hans Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) July 3, 2014
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By Friday, Embiid had grown impatient and decided it was time to block LeBron on Twitter:
He probably DM'd me but I dont read my DMs so I'm gonna go ahead and block him pic.twitter.com/PunjHSiQRI
— Joel-Hans Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) July 4, 2014
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But just when you thought the chase was over, Embiid decided there was another way to get to LeBron:
What's Mr Rich Paul's twitter account? That might be his agent. Whoever finds it, gets a hug. I need to holla at him (idk if that's English)
— Joel-Hans Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) July 4, 2014
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LeBron finally tweeted on Friday, and Embiid was right on it, leading to this reaction from him:
gave it your all
— LeBron James (@KingJames) July 4, 2014
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Was that tweet directed to me? I wonder #MrWonderland
— Joel-Hans Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) July 4, 2014
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Won't @ me though #WeMadeIt
— Joel-Hans Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) July 5, 2014
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Afterwards, Embiid finally decided to retire from recruiting and focus on basketball instead:
Alright I'm really done. I'm sorry if I direspected someone.
Sincerely,
JOEL EMBIID
— Joel-Hans Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) July 5, 2014
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He has yet to tweet about LeBron since, but we will definitely keep you posted.
If there’s one thing we know about Embiid, it’s that he definitely has a wonderful sense of humor.
It will be interesting to see what happens when he meets LeBron on the court for the first time. I’d like to think the two of them will have a pretty good laugh about all of this.
Go follow Joel Embiid, he’s already the social media rookie of the year.
What do you think?
Follow steven lebron on Twitter at @steven_lebron.
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