After a couple of impressive performances (in limited minutes) this preseason, Joel Embiid might be the early favorite to take home Rookie of the Year honors (if he can manage to log enough minutes). He’s also our runaway favorite to win the NBA’s unofficial social media awards for having absolutely no filter when posting completely random, inexplicable, and hilarious things on Twitter and Instagram.
He was at it again yesterday, this time targeting new Grizzlies forward Chandler Parsons for some reason. After Parsons posted a completely innocuous video of himself getting up shots at the FedEx Forum on Monday, Embiid jumped into the comments section to tell him “Gonna cook your ass tomorrow,” a reference to the Sixers’ road game against the Grizzlies in Memphis on Tuesday night.
You might have to spend a minute or two scrolling through the comments to find it, but it’s there.
Nevermind that it’s preseason and that they don’t even play the same position and likely won’t spend much time guarding each other, unless Embiid can get the switch on a pick-and-pop, where he’s shown surprising range so far. The important thing to remember here is that there’s no rhyme or reason to Embiid’s social media presence. It’s simply an ongoing occasion for him to host his own personal theater of the absurd.