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Joel Embiid Says Tardiness Report, Which Mike Breen Apologized For, is Not True
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This story was pretty much dead on the vine, but Joel Embiid was asked about the Mike Breen tardiness report after Thursday’s preseason game in Brooklyn and said this, via Dave McMenamin at ESPN:
NEW YORK — Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid said a recent report about LeBron James getting on him about being late to practice “is not true” and caused him to wonder why he was subject to the outside scrutiny.
“It sucks, but what can you do? It’s unfortunate,” Embiid said after making his preseason debut in Philadelphia’s 114-108 loss to the Brooklyn Nets on Thursday night. “I don’t know where that came from. It never happened. … I think we just got to focus on ourselves. There’s going to be a lot of outside noise to pull us apart from what we’re supposed to be and what we’re supposed to accomplish. So, it’s important that we stay together and we keep our [head] down.”
During the fourth quarter of the Sixers’ 120-97 win over the New York Knicks on Monday, longtime play-by-play announcer Mike Breen detailed on the MSG Networks broadcast what he had heard about James reacting to Embiid not making it onto the practice court on time.
“Somebody told me before the game that they were out ready to practice, and Joel Embiid walked out on the court a couple of minutes late, and LeBron let him hear it,” Breen said on the broadcast.
James called the report “lies” on his Instagram account Tuesday. Breen later apologized.
Embiid went on to say that he is an “easy target,” and that’s probably the takeaway here. There’s going to be a lot of yapping and chatter surrounding this team in 2026 and 2027. They’re going to have the figurative target on their back since they’re a title contender on paper.
To be fair, Mike Breen is not some talking head. He’s not a bloviator with a debate show. He does call Knicks games, but I never got the sense he was some pro-Knicks, anti-Sixers homer. I can’t remember him ever saying anything that could be construed that way. And he apologized and elaborated on the report anyway, which was accepted a lot better than Stephen A Smith’s follow up regarding Lane Johnson and mental health. So I think he deserves credit for manning up in this situation.
Bottom line, there’s gonna be a lot of these scenarios this year. Get ready for “sources say this” and “sources say that.” Some of it will be true and some of it will be false, but the Sixers know the scrutiny level is going to be incredibly high.
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