The Sixers lost again on Saturday night, and afterward Shams Charania and Keith Pompey both reported a locker room altercation between Joel Embiid and Marcus Hayes. Pompey originally reported that Hayes was “punched,” while Shams called it a “shove,” then Pompey changed his reporting from “punch” to “shove” and Kyle Neubeck gave this account on the PHLY Sixers postgame show:

“Marcus was present in the locker room and the second that Joel realized he was there, got into a verbal back and forth. Obviously we can’t repeat many of the words that were said; the basic gist of it was basically, ‘you can say I suck, you can say whatever you want to say about me as a player, don’t ever put my dead brother’s name in your mouth, don’t talk about my family, don’t bring them into this, you want to talk me like a man, talk to me about basketball, that’s different, but if you ever talk about my family again we’re gonna have real problems.’ They go kinda back and forth, and at some point, let’s say 90 seconds to two minutes into this back-and-forth, Joel shoves him, team security steps in, players kind of surround the situation and everyone dispersed. During all this, I’m standing directly behind Joel, because we were supposed to be talking to Tyrese Maxey postgame, and Tyrese was just kind of sitting there like ‘what the hell do I do?'”

This is a continuation of Friday’s events. If you missed it, Embiid did a media session at the Camden practice facility where he called out Hayes and other critics questioning his desire to play.

Marcus had earlier apologized for beginning a recent story about Embiid with these two paragraphs:

Wrote Hayes: “So, I rewrote the lede to my column and replaced the picture. I can see why so many people were upset about it. Sorry about that. Thanks for all of the constructive criticism.”

That’s the gist. Embiid didn’t like what Hayes originally wrote in that column, and when Hayes showed up, things apparently popped off. I’ll keep throwing updates on this post, but Shams and others are reporting that the NBA opened an investigation. There’s gotta be video somewhere. We need the video like a fish needs water. Gimme a shout if you’ve got it and we’ll talk compensation.


EDIT – Kevin Cooney was there for the AP and wrote up the whole thing:

As reporters entered the locker room to talk to players, Embiid stood and confronted Hayes.

“The next time you bring up my dead brother and my son again, you are going to see what I’m going to do to you and I’m going to have to … live with the consequences,” Embiid said to Hayes.

Embiid continued, with several instances of profanity in the next few sentences. Hayes offered an apology, which Embiid did not want. “That’s not the f——— first time.” Embiid said.

Embiid later said that he doesn’t care what reporters say. “But you do,” Hayes answered.