Five Days After Telling Joel Embiid His "Big Ass Better Suit Up," Kendrick Perkins Thinks the Sixers Should Shut Him Down
There’s always one guy that wants to sit an injured athlete for the rest of the season. We had David Carr mention it with Jalen Hurts a couple months ago and now we have Kendrick Perkins:
Kendrick Perkins: “If I’m the 76ers, I’d shut Joel Embiid down for this season.”
Michael Wilbon: “You mean the rest of the regular season?”
Kendrick Perkins: “The rest of the year.”
(h/t @ClutchPoints)
— Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) February 1, 2024
Check out the reaction from former Warriors GM Bob Myers.
It’s all you need to know about what teams think of talking heads on ESPN making organizational decisions:
The funniest part about this whole thing is only five days ago Perk told Embiid his big ass better suit up in Denver:
Embiid hasn’t played in Denver since 2019!!! Come on now big fella @JoelEmbiid stop ducking that smoke and stand on Business today! Carry the hell on… pic.twitter.com/3dbsgmVby5
— Kendrick Perkins (@KendrickPerkins) January 27, 2024
Beautiful. It’s the perfect encapsulation of sports media today. Guy who doesn’t know what the fuck is going on behind the scenes and talking out of his ass completing a 180 to pivot to the opposite end of the spectrum. Good for Big Perk. You can’t lose a job that way. Not with those scorchers.
The “Joel Embiid hasn’t played in Denver since 2019” narrative has been so overblown. Let’s lay it out:
November 8th, 2019: Joel Embiid’s last time playing in Denver. Sixers lose on a last second shot by Nikola Jokic
2020: Sixers don’t play in Denver due to COVID.
March 30th, 2021: Embiid injured his knee on March 12th, missing eight straight games before Denver and not returning until April 3rd.
November 18th, 2022: Embiid misses the game because he was in the NBA’s health and safety protocols after testing positive for COVID. This was the sixth straight game he missed. He’d miss nine games altogether. The Sixers actually won this game and held Jokic to three points in the second half thanks to the great Charles Bassey.
March 27th, 2023: We were at this game and boy oh boy when we got the news were we stunned. This is easily the hardest to defend:
Embiid missed the game with a sore calf after playing 70 minutes of back-to-back basketball with one day’s rest in between. This was the Sixers’ fourth game in five days. It also falls on Doc Rivers and the team for playing him in a back-to-back against the Suns and Warriors (two games they both lost) and then sitting him for the game in Denver. I remember being pissed and thinking they didn’t manage him well on this road trip.
January 26th, 2024: Injured knee in Pacers game. The controversy was amplified by the Sixers not scratching him until minutes before the game, without putting him on the injury report. Ramona Shelburne reported later that he couldn’t even jump in warmups and that Embiid told the Sixers he didn’t want to be on the injury report. He missed the following game and now looks like he’ll miss multiple games with the knee injury suffered in the Warriors game.