After Watching Joel Embiid Cry In The Post Game Press Conference About How He "Can't Win Alone", It Is Inanity That He Won The MVP This Season
I'm sorry. I like Joel Embiid. I seriously do. I think he's a good-to-great basketball player, and a good person. I should have no reason to hate on him whatsoever. To call him out for talking like a loser. To call out all the losers who voted for him for MVP this season. All of the above.
But I just can't help it after watching him put up 15 points for his team in a backs-against-the-wall game Game 7 against a team that's owned him his entire career in the league. AND THEN having the gall to step to the post-game microphones and drop this rotten excuse- “I can’t win alone. Me and James [Harden], we just can’t win alone. That’s why basketball is played 5-on-5.”
Laugh out fucking loud.
I know it gets talked about incessantly, about how "Super Teams" ruined the league, the game, and rivalries as a whole in the NBA. How played who court other superstars, or seek out teams knocking on a Championships door already don't stack up to the historical greats of yesterday. How they're bitches. But man oh fucking dan. Come on Embiid. Don't make it so hard to want to like you.
First, we spent the last 5.5 months listening to you bitch and moan about how you better win the MVP this season. How you definitely didn't out this past summer with the focus on winning an MVP. How your focus was only on winning a championship. Then we got lectured by you for not thinking big time players care about winning MVPs.
Then we listened to you claim whoever didn't vote for you this season "must hate you".
(Sidebar- he won, and he gave an incredible acceptance speech about it, the things he's overcome, and how people should never stop dreaming because anything is possible. Again, really hard not to like the guy. At least it shouldn't be.)
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Then we watch you blow a 3-2 series lead, and complain you don't have enough help in the post-game press conference.
Yah Sam.what!
I use that gif of Jimmy Butler because you know who's a real MVP Joel? Jimmy Butler is. That's who.
A guy who wills his team to victory when it matters. Who puts up gaudy numbers not in the regular season, but in playoff games. In close-out playoff games. When shit matters.
Not a guy who sits out of Game 1 of a playoff series against their dreaded rival, on the road in a hostile environment, and watches as his team goes out and steals game 1, without him, on the road, (without him), behind his future hall-of-fame teammate's 45 point performance.
A guy who if you took him off the team, like Butler, that team wouldn't even stand a chance.
That's straight-up loser talk by Embiid. But the sad thing is I don't think it's Embiid's own thoughts there. I think its the army of "yes-men" losers he surrounds himself with now in Philly. In his ear, telling him he's best in the world, and his organization hasn't given him any help. Now granted, the 76ers haven't given Embiid much help outside of bringing Harden in, but that's not for sake of trying. Hell, no teams attempted to hit it big in the draft and with free-agents more arguably than Philadelphia. They're just the absolute fucking worst at it. (Don't ever forget when Philly TRADED UP with the Celtics to draft Markelle Fultz over Jayson Tatum. Or let Jimmy Butler walk in order to resign Tobias Harris instead. Or the Ben Simmons disaster. Remember it all.) Again, point for Embiid.
But Joel, maybe if you dropped 60 tonight and watched your team get fucking steamrolled in Game 7, that might have qualified the "I need help" comments.
But my man, you had ONE rebound in the first half, and one basket in the second half tonight Joel.
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And credit where it's due, this is still better than Giannis saying what he said after his team got bounced by Jimmy's Heat.
Maybe it's just a generational thing after all? I don't know, but that mentality fucking sucks.
The writers who proudly voted this guy as MVP should be embarrassed also.
I realize the NBA MVP award has turned into a title based on stats. Which is totally fine. Just change the name of the trophy. Rename it after a player who cared more about winning an individual trophy than going deep in the playoffs. A player who openly campaigns for the award like a politician. Don't name it the MVP anymore because it makes no sense in the literal sense.
Most valuable player goes to a guy who is as close to invaluable to his team as it gets. A guy who can go somewhere and turn an entire team around. And who if was taken off his roster, that team would equally spiral without them.
Not this underperforming selfishness.
As the wise man John Mason once said,
Winners set goals to win championships. Not personal accodaltes. Team ones. Not MVP trophies. Championship ones.
p.s. - Ben Simmons is such a great villain