Joel Embiid, totally not listening, via the New York Times

Joel Embiid, totally not listening, via the New York Times

The New York Times yesterday put up a piece on the NBA’s Rookie Transition Program, a kind of one-stop-shop for teaching young (now rich) dudes to behave like rational, well-rounded, smart, rich men. As part of a longer piece on it, there’s a short video where they briefly talk to Joel Embiid (including a literal post credit scene where Embiid says he told Wiggins he was going to dunk on him), and then show that shot above, of Embiid turning side-to-side in his chair, seemingly not paying as much attention as those around him. But what would he have even been paying attention to?

The program itself was dense, intense and dizzyingly varied. There were tips on how to drive your new sports car without having an unfortunate incident. There were lessons in how to sleep properly when you keep crazy hours and stay in hotel beds that might not be as long as you are tall (make sure the room is dark, for starters; if you have to eat late, stick to calming carbohydrates). There was advice about navigating on-camera interviews when, for instance, you are half-naked in the locker room. There was a bit on “embracing manhood.” There was a discussion of gender violence, sexual harassment and the appropriate treatment of women. There were segments on anger, guns, weapons, drugs and gambling (message: avoid those things).

Well that all seems like important stuff. What did they learn about the treatment of women, maybe using a movie to set up an example?

After a scene from “Blue Jasmine” in which a character gets into a fight with her boyfriend after she sleeps with another man, the players voted on what they would have done, with options including “hit the girlfriend” and “leave and go get high and drunk.” (No one chose those.) Sixty-two percent of the rookies said they would “call another girl and hang out with her.”

If there was a write-in option, I’m sure Embiid wrote “slide into her DMs.” And how about behaving with the fairer sex, about which Detlef Schrempf said “you’re talking about superstar athletes and male hormones, for those who want to partake, it’s easily accessible 24/7”:

To deter the rookies from partaking, there was a slide show juxtaposing photographs of beautiful semi-clad women with photographs of hideously diseased genitalia.

Wellllll shit. That should probably work.