76ers star Joel Embiid has had an eventful start to the season and he hasn’t seen the court yet. Following his run in the Olympics with Team USA, Embiid has missed several games to start the season due to what is being referred to as “left knee management”. His absence has already drawn the ire of several members of the NBA community, but his most recent act against a reporter
The former MVP got into an altercation with Marcus Hayes of the Philadelphia Inquirer after Hayes published an unflattering column about him, centered around his availability to play. In the article, Haynes invoked Embiid’s brother and son to make his point about his availability.
The star center confronted Hayes at the conclusion of the 76ers Saturday contest against the Memphis Grizzlies. Embiid shoved the reporter and was ultimately suspended for three games by the NBA following an investigation. With the scrutiny of Embiid at an all-time high, ESPN’s Paul Hembekides took to his guest host spot on Mike Greenburg’s show Greeny to defend the Philadelphia big man.
Hembekides specifically responded to Haynes’s criticism of Embiid, saying, “This is a person who has played in the playoffs through an orbital bone fracture through Bell’s palsy, who has had legitimate major knee concerns and operations and issues and injury dating to his college days. He’s a behemoth and no person that big. That tall and that wide is going to have the ability to live their life the same way that we are. And so it’s easy for us and our ivory towers to say that Joel Embiid should play 82 games a year and 30 minutes a night. It’s not reality. It’s not realistic.
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He continued, “And Marcus Hayes, of all people who has theoretically watched every game that Joel Embiid has ever played, should understand that. You can’t have it both ways, okay, in the case of Joel Embiid. You can’t be critical that he’s load managing this season and also be critical that he’s not I have found a lot of the Joel Embiid narrative to be super piled on to a player for where you can find legitimate criticism. There’s no question this column crosses the line, and in my opinion, Q, the narrative far too often crosses the line as well.
As Embiid serves his suspension, the 76ers play the Clippers in Los Angeles as they look to regain their footing with new free agent signee Paul George in the lineup.