Joel Embiid’s season, the leader of the Sixers and one of the NBA’s great stars, is being convulsive, to put it mildly. On the sporting side, he has only been able to play nine of the 28 games of the struggling Sixers (11-17) because of the eternal problems of his battered knee and recently suffered a fracture in the sinuses that forces him to wear a mask during games.
It could be a superhero mask, but in his case it is a villain’s mask, a label he is earning in recent times for his unsportsmanlike behaviour and his repeated disrespect to all living things: opponents, referees, the public and even journalists.
Obscene gestures… on Christmas Day
His latest outburst was to make lewd gestures during the Sixers’ victory over the Celtics (114-118), precisely on Christmas Day, where most people put on their best face. Not him, and for that ugly action on such a special and media-friendly day, he has just been fined $75,000 by the NBA, a bonus for a guy who this season will earn $51.4 million in Philadelphia, the second highest paid player in the league after Stephen Curry ($55.7 million).
It’s not the first time, and in fact it is becoming more and more common, that the Cameroonian center goes off the rails. Three days ago he was ejected for confronting Jenna Schroeder, the referee of the game between the Sixers and Spurs, after she called a foul on him for fouling giant Victor Wembanyama. Embiid, the 2023 MVP, did not agree and angrily protested that decision in her face, which cost him the first technical. Then the Cameroonian exploded and had to be held back by his teammates to separate him from Schroeder. And he was ejected.
Three-match ban for pushing a journalist
And just two months ago, the NBA imposed a three-game and salary suspension for pushing Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Marcus Hayes, who had apparently written some things in his newspaper that were not entirely to the liking of the 2.13m, 30-year-old player, who decided to take the law into his own hands with the journalist.
As was the case last year, when he was fined $25,000 by the NBA for making obscene gestures (again) during the third quarter of the game between the Sixers and the Nets. It seems that he has not learned his lesson, and as he ignores the fines given the money he earns, the league is going to have to come up with other kinds of sanctions that affect guys like him more and that do not only have to do with scratching their pockets. That clearly doesn’t work. At least not with him.
