Is Joel Embiid an A**hat?

SI published a Cauldron piece today by Brian Geltzeiler depicting troubles is Sixersville. Brett Brown and the marketing department weren’t on board with trading MCW. Saric may not come to the Sixers until 2017 when he’s not restricted by the rookie salary cap. But, the big story in town is some unsettling news about Joel Embiid, a bunch of which we kind of already knew.

He’s having weight issues, mainly because he loves junk food. He likes chicken fingers, hot dogs, and pitchers of shirley temples.

Per a source, the Sixers’ training staff was so concerned about what he was eating, they stocked the refrigerator in his downtown hotel residence each week with healthy food. When a staffer went to restock the fridge each week, most everything was uneaten and unopened, and they were throwing out the fruits and vegetables every week. When the team subsequently asked to see Embiid’s room service bill, they found that most days he was ordering junk food along with his signature beverage, a pitcher of Shirley Temples. Embiid also was frequently seen feasting on chicken fingers and hot dogs at and after games.

There’s worse he could be ingesting into his body. Jack Daniels. Heroin. Cocaine. If he’s not worried about his teeth not rotting out or his cholestoral, that’s his issue. We can’t be too concerned about that.

Dude is from Cameroon. The average median income there is like $3,000. Of course dude is gonna go a little bonkers with some change in his NBA wallet. He’s young and he’s got young man’s metabolism. I don’t really think Charles Barkley was eating bananas and lean protein back in his heyday. Once he’s healthy and able to workout he’ll burn those calories off.

That’s where I think we get to one of the main issues to come out of the SI piece today. He needs to get healthy and, apparently, he’s not that dedicated to that cause.

While Embiid was in Vegas, he was mandated to wear the walking boot in advance of the second surgery, but Embiid not only refused to wear the boot, but he carried himself as if nothing was wrong with the foot, shooting jumpers and even occasionally dunking. These actions have given rise to the theory that Embiid actually re-broke his foot, rather than the initial injury not healing properly. It also led to Embiid having the surgery a month later than the club originally had hoped.

He’s got to wear the boot. I know it’s been a long time, but he is getting paid $4.4M to get healthy and play hoops. He can still eat bon-bons and drink shirley temples with the boot on. There’s a lot of peoples’ hoops hopes and and a lot of money riding on him getting himself on the court. If he re-broke the foot by basically being a clown and disregarding doctors’ instructions, thereby delaying his rehabilitation, he just might be more of an asshat than immature.

Which brings us to this part of the SI article:

The fact that Brown sent Embiid home from a West Coast road trip last season for being insubordinate to the team’s strength coach and training staff is well documented, but according to a source, the tipping point in the decision was Embiid physically threatening the strength coach on that road trip. According to sources, this followed a pattern of insubordination from Embiid during the rehabilitation of his initial foot injury that sidelined him for the entire 2014–15 season, where he would repeatedly refuse to answer questions from the training staff about his workouts and therapy sessions.

Refusing to answer questions about his workouts and therapy? Threatening the strength coach? Come on, man. Who goes around threatening the coaching staff, especially without ever playing a game? Even if he was an NBA all-star, it would be a dick move.  Unfortunately, this sounds like the making of an a**hat.

It’s crazy what guaranteed money does to some individuals.

Dude needs to put his boot on, workout as recommended, drink all the shirley temples he wants, eat all the chicken fingers he wants, and tweet his sometimes funny heart out. Just get f**king healthy, already.