Cameroonian center Joel Embiid (Yaoundé, 30 years old), one of the NBA’s biggest stars, still hasn’t played a single minute so far this season. Now he must stay away from the courts for another three games after being suspended from employment and salary by the American league. An incident with a journalist, whom he pushed into the Philadelphia 76ers locker room after the team’s loss against the Memphis Grizzlies last Saturday, has led to the player’s temporary expulsion.
“Mutual respect is fundamental in relationships between players and media in the NBA,” explained Joe Dumars, executive vice president of basketball operations for the competition, during the announcement of the sanction. “While we understand that Joel was offended by the personal nature of the reporter’s opinion column, interactions should remain professional on both sides, and never become physical.” Embiid, with the Sixers in a hole of one win and five losses, will miss the games against the Clippers, Lakers and Hornets just when the medical team had given him the go-ahead to debut this season.
Left knee problems, which limited his participation last season and affected his production during the loss to the New York Knicks in the first round of the playoffs After a surgical intervention, they have been the talk of the city of Philadelphia at this start of the season. Marcus Hayes, columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and recipient of the push, had been one of the sharpest and most critical feathers with Embiid throughout this preseason, accusing him of not being up to par with the team, the industry and, especially, the fans.
The player was especially upset by an article where the journalist quoted his son and his deceased brother to talk about his tendency toward “absenteeism from work.” During the verbal confrontation in the Sixers locker room, Embiid talked down to the reporter. “The next time you mention my dead brother and my son, you’ll see what I’m going to do to you, and I’ll have to live with the consequences,” he snapped, according to ESPN. Hayes apologized for the lines written and later removed these mentions from his column, an apology that the Cameroonian did not accept.
Embiid, in the exchange of words, told him that he did not care at all about the journalists’ opinion, to which the columnist responded: “But you do care.” It was there that the player pounced on Hayes, forcing the franchise’s public relations director to intervene, who stood between them. “I’ve done a lot for this damn city to be treated like this,” the 76ers star lamented after reading the column, days before the incident. The player will lose more than a million dollars of a total salary of 51 million for the 2024-2025 season as a result of the NBA suspension.
In a statement after the suspension was announced, the editor and vice president of the InquirerGabriel Escobar, defended his reporter: “Marcus is an experienced and outstanding columnist who offers sharp and luminous comments based on his observations. “You are free to disagree with what he says, but a physical attack is unjustified and unacceptable, and we take this situation very seriously.”
The Sixers hope to turn the page soon, with Embiid’s expected return to the lineup when the Knicks visit their home field next Tuesday. “The first thing we did was ask him how he was doing, and then we tried to focus him on the job we’re doing,” Philadelphia coach Nick Nurse said after the incident. “Playing will help you, yes, it will help you be more focused.”
Before his knee surgery in February, the Cameroonian averaged 34.7 points, 11 rebounds and 5.6 assists in 39 games played, averages higher than his MVP campaign in the 2022-2023 season. His presence on the United States Olympic team that took gold in Paris 2024 raised suspicions about his conditioning and physical care throughout the summer, even more so when the Sixers did not give a compelling reason to justify his absence in the first games. of the present campaign. The NBA also investigated this situation and ended up fining the franchise $100,000 for failing to comply with the competition’s injury reporting regulations.
