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Is It A Big Deal If Joel Embiid Went Out Saturday Night?

Kevin Kinkead

By Kevin Kinkead

Published:

Joel Embiid in game 4
Photo Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

Joel Embiid had a tough offensive game on Sunday afternoon. He wasn’t feeling well, texted Brett Brown at six in the morning, and needed an IV with fluids to get himself healthy enough to play.

There are about a half-dozen folks on social media saying he spent Saturday night at Trevor Noah’s comedy show at The Met in North Philly:

Noah performed twice at The Met this weekend and both shows began at 7:30 p.m. and ended at 9:30. No drinks for Embiid is what I was told and his group, which sat in the front row, was escorted out of the venue afterward. Noah and Embiid are friends and have spent time together previously.

Now, listen, I’ll be 100% clear with this opinion:

I personally do not give half a shit if an athlete goes to a theater and sits in the crowd or stands back stage, watches the gig, and then comes home and goes to bed, even on the night before a game. I’m in the camp of people who think it’s naive to believe that a 25-year-old superstar athlete is going to encase himself in bubble wrap while quarantining himself in his apartment and pumping Emergen-C into his system via a tube inserted into his arm. Obviously if you’re gonna rage at the club until 2 a.m., then that’s a different story.

But I certainly understand the other side of it, the idea that this is the Eastern Conference semifinals and you’ve got a key player already dealing with a knee issue, plus a stomach thing that affected his game two performance, then this virus that he says was unrelated to that stomach problem. If there was ever a time to just have a quiet night at home, maybe fire up Fortnite or Netflix or play Scrabble, then do that instead.

Bottom line is this –

Joel’s health situation as a 7’2″, 250 pound man who travels all across North America is infinitely more fragile than the health situation of you or I. Even with good people surrounding him 24/7, he’s a unique specimen with a complicated medical history.

That said, might it be best practice to be uber-cautious here? Maybe you just lay low and and get your rest, especially when game four is at 3:30 in the afternoon and not slotted for prime time.

Once the Sixers are eliminated, or they win the NBA title, then you can go to Cabo for two weeks and get shit faced with Sammy Hagar, or whomever is currently living there. You can crush beers on the double-decker bus traveling down Broad Street to the Art Museum, right?

Similar to the All-Star Game, this is just another thing that looks bad from an optics perspective, regardless of whether or not it actually had any tangible impact on Joel’s health and his game four performance.

Kevin Kinkead
Kevin Kinkead

Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com

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