PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid made his return on Friday to help the Sixers knock off the Miami Heat 99-79 and get themselves back in the series after trailing it 2-0 due to two lackluster performances in Miami.
It was Embiid’s first game since Game 6 against the Toronto Raptors when he took an elbow to the face from Raptors star Pascal Siakam. The blow to the face caused him to get a concussion and suffer an orbital fracture. Therefore, he missed the first two games of this series with the Heat.
When the elbow happened, Raptors fans cheered the incident. There were also a lot of profanities thrown around by the fans in that series and Embiid was upset more with that than the Siakam elbow.
“I don’t think it was intentional,” said Embiid. “That’s my guy. It’s unfortunate. I don’t think he meant to do it, but I was more irritated by the perception of when that happened by really their fans. I always thought they had great fans, but it kinda changed my mind about their fans up there. Whether it was throughout the series and the F chants and all that stuff.”
Siakam even apologized to Embiid after the play to let him know he was sorry about what happened. The fans? They were the bigger issue in Embiid’s eyes.
“It never gets to me anyways, but I think they got mad that I did the airplane celebration,” Embiid continued. “It’s been going on in a few arenas these days. The fans, they just feel like it’s OK to just say F somebody. There’s a bunch of kids in the arena. I don’t think that should be OK. Even if there wasn’t kids.”
The big fella knows that he has to bite his tongue a bit in terms of reacting to the fans and the jeers he gets in road arenas. He has to be able to focus on his play on the floor and let that do the talking.
“It’s almost like if you respond to it, it’s almost like the Draymond (Green) situation,” Embiid finished. “The league fines you. It doesn’t bother me, I’m just speaking for really everybody in the NBA and like I said, if you give it, you also gotta be able to take it. I’ve said it about our fans too. When they boo and if the players are gonna go back, you gotta be able to take it too.”
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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