NBA superstar Joel Embiid under fire for pulling a Tom Brady after playoff loss
The last time professional sports teams from Philadelphia and New England faced off in the postseason was Super Bowl LII between the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots.
The Eagles won 41-33, and tortured Philly fans celebrated their team’s first ever Lombardi Trophy.
But one of the bigger postgame stories to emerge, aside from the historic win itself, was Tom Brady allegedly snubbing Nick Foles for the customary postgame handshake. Naturally, Patriots detractors had a field day with that angle, accusing Brady of being a poor sport and sore loser.
Fast-forward a few months, and Philadelphia and Boston re-engaged in a postseason duel, albeit in a different professional sport.
The injury-ravaged Boston Celtics dispatched the upstart Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday night with a win in Game 5, thus taking the series four games to one.
And this time it’s a Philadelphia superstar who’s catching flak for not shaking hands.
After a hard-fought series in which most of the games were very close, it seems that hyper-competitive trash-talking 76ers superstar Joel Embiid wanted no part of postgame congratulations.
Following a defensive flurry that preserved a 114-112 win for the Celtics, Embiid was caught on video immediately walking off the floor instead of offering congratulations to the Celtics.
Naturally, fans started calling Embiid out for his antics.
In fairness, Embiid does bring this upon himself by virtue of how much trash he talks. Embiid has made quite a few enemies with his non-stop yapping, including stars like Russell Westbrook.
But by that same token, Embiid has been a breath of fresh air in an era of professional basketball where everyone is best friends who’ve played together since the AAU. It’s not like Embiid plays dirty or tries to injure people. He just likes to talk and is insanely competitive. And he eventually did offer his respect.
Not the way I wanted it to end but Hell of a series… Much respect to Boston and those fans.. y’all made it fun #TheProcess pic.twitter.com/lT6g0T6p89
— Joel Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) May 10, 2018
The 76ers, built around the 24-year-old Embiid and the 21-year-old Ben Simmons, have a bright future ahead of them. Barring injury, which is a major caveat with Embiid (he had been limited to just 31 games in his first three years), the Sixers will probably be irking their opponents for quite some time.
The depleted Celtics, meanwhile, have the unenviable task of trying to derail a red-hot LeBron James in the Eastern Conference Finals. Game 1 of that series is set for Sunday.
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