During the first round of the NBA Playoffs, the world was shocked to see #3 seed Sixers fall behind the #6 seed Brooklyn Nets at home in the first game. However, the loss wasn’t what garnered the most attention during that game.
Down 14 in the Fourth Quarter, Joel Embiid and Amir Johnson were caught looking at a text message while sitting on the bench.
Later, Embiid said that Amir was checking on his daughter, who was home sick with a serious illness.
However, this is a rare sight on the sidelines, and something that is actually in violation of league rules, so it immediately became a big deal, especially on Twitter.
HoopsHype writer Alex Kennedy gave an honest initial response to the video, and his thoughts reflect a lot of the common opinion that initially came out regarding the clip. It wasn’t a great look during a losing game, but without knowing much context, it’s likely that people reacted too quickly.
Draymond Green, Spartan legend and NBA Champion, weighed in on the conversation last night with a message that I believe changed some of the perspectives around this issue and already has 70k likes on Twitter:
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that these are just people working their job. While against team rules, it didn’t hurt anyone that Embiid glanced at his teammate’s phone, and I think we all learned a lesson that we should all wait until we get some context before reacting to certain things we see on the internet.
