Game three in Brooklyn tomorrow night.

The Nets had media availability today and said some things about the wicked elbow Joel Embiid struck Jarrett Allen with on Monday night, the Shaquille O’Neal spin move that resulted in Joel receiving a flagrant 1. After the game, Embiid and Ben Simmons started laughing after Joel offered up an apology:

“I’m not usually humble, that’s why he’s laughing,” Embiid explains at the end of that clip.

You might recall that Rodions Kurucs was also given a flagrant-1 when he got Simmons with an elbow a few possessions later, a play where he was boxing out Ben on a rebound attempt.

That video, after the jump:

https://twitter.com/TheRenderNBA/status/1117959474218663941

Kurucs called it a dirty play, the Embiid elbow, while Allen said he didn’t think there was “menace” behind it.

Stefan Bondy wrote this regarding Kurucs in the New York Daily News:

On Sunday, Simmons told the media in Philadelphia that he needs to be more aggressive when he’s guarded by Brooklyn’s Jared Dudley and “the other kid.” The Nets locker room assumed he was talking about Kurucs.

“I don’t like what he said in the media about me,” Kurucs said. “I want to let him know my name. I’ll play hard, I’ll go at him and I’m not scared of him.”

Still, Kurucs foul was much tamer than Embiid’s flying elbow–only one was considered for an ejection.

“I didn’t go dirty. I just trying to box out. He hit me, I was trying to hit him,” Kurucs said. “And the thing is my arms slipped and I got him in the chin.”

There were other tinges of annoyance emanating from Brooklyn today, as evidenced here:

Begley said other Nets players “generally downplayed” the laughter while surmising that they may actually feel the same way as LeVert.

And finally this:

Dudley isn’t wrong there. The Sixers only scored four transition points in game one, and he was a big reason why, getting back and clogging up the lane while playing good defense against Simmons. Ben only scored two points on 22 possessions against Dudley in game one while the veteran missed game two with a calf issue.

Should be a good one tomorrow night.