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The Philadelphia 76ers called a player’s meeting on Monday night following a loss to the Miami Heat and news of it leaked to Shams Charania of ESPN, who noted that Tyrese Maxey called out Joel Embiid for habitually not reporting to team activities on time, among other details.
And Embiid was not happy that the details of that meeting were leaked publicly.
As NBA reporter Jake Fischer wrote: “So when ESPN reported details on Tuesday morning, from inside the 76ers’ team meeting following Monday night’s blown lead in Miami, one league figure close to Philadelphia’s All-Star center told me: ‘Joel is going to be furious.’ And that Embiid was going to try and find the Sixers’ supposed snitch.”
Embiid also publicly spoke on the situation.
“Whoever leaked that is a real piece of s–t,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “But even then, we talked about a lot of things. I don’t want to get into the details, but that whole thing probably took 30 seconds.”
Paul George also expressed disappointment that the team meeting was leaked during Thursday’s episode of Podcast P (7:30 mark), though he said the meeting itself was “healthy.”
“It being leaked, that’s where it kind of negates everything that we had in that meeting as far as trusting in one another and putting everything out there so that we can all have these conversations and it being not taken from a bad place,” George noted. “So it was kind of f–ked up that got leaked.”
The Sixers have now started 2-12 on the season, a discouraging first chapter for the superstar trio of Embiid, George and Maxey after the summer addition of PG-13 brought plenty of excitement to Philadelphia.
But a combination of injuries, unfamiliarity and the role players not being able to pick up the slack—outside of rookie Jared McCain, who has looked like a future star early in the year—contributed to the nightmare start. It hasn’t helped that there have been off-court issues like the leaked meeting, or Embiid’s confrontation with a reporter in the locker room over his displeasure with a column mentioning his family while questioning his professionalism.
“It’s kind of annoying, having to deal with the same things over and over and over,” Embiid told reporters. “All I am trying to do is focus on basketball and be the best I can be for my family, on and off the court. But for some reason, it just feels like negativity keeps following me, which I don’t understand why. It’s a shame, but it doesn’t change the fact that we still have to do better as a team. Right now, we don’t have a lot of margin for error.”
Now the question is simple—can the Sixers turn this thing around? The one silver lining is that they still have 68 games to figure it out.
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