Joel Embiid: ‘I’m the reason for everything, so I’ll take the blame for everything’

Patrick Beverley: “Being on time… I love to be on time. I respect a person who’s on time. Not saying I disrespect Joel, but if you’re constantly late, it can be looked at as, ‘Bro, what the f***? Like, you don’t care about what the f*** we got going on?’ I had a teammate, a superstar teammate, before who was late. And it wasn’t all the time—just probably late this one time because he had some stuff he had to do. My thing with him was like, ‘Okay, yeah, I respect that, but your having to do something that causes you to be late now makes all of us stay out at practice longer. Like, what about my son I gotta pick up from school?’” -via YouTube / November 21, 2024

“It’s kind of annoying having to deal with the same things over and over and over,” Embiid said Wednesday. “It’s been like that my whole career. All I try to do is focus on basketball, and trying to make the best living for my family, on and off the court. “But it’s unbelievable. It just feels like negativity keeps following us, which I don’t understand why. But it is a shame, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’ve still all got to be better.” -via The Philadelphia Inquirer / November 21, 2024

Patrick Beverley: “Superstars have to lead by example because at the end of the day, if you disrespect the game, it’s going to come back and bite you in the ass. When you create habits like that, you look at the team, you look at injuries, and then you look at everyone around you. You’re like, ‘Okay, cool, that’s why they’re not having success.’ You’re disrespecting the game. But you look at a team like Boston… maybe guys are late once or twice, but that doesn’t look like a team where people are late every single day.” -via YouTube / November 21, 2024