Joel Embiid Reveals Message to Shake Milton, Georges Niang

After a heated exchange between teammates, Joel Embiid felt he needed to get involved. After Saturday's game, the big man revealed his message.

The Philadelphia 76ers weren’t the best version of themselves during the first half of Saturday afternoon’s game against the Denver Nuggets. As Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets were finding tons of success on both ends of the floor, even draining 66 percent of their shots, you could sense frustration coming from Philadelphia’s side.

During the second quarter, Sixers veteran forward Georges Niang reached a boiling point. With a little over six minutes left to play in the first half, Sixers guard Shake Milton took advantage of a Matisse Thybulle swipe as the Nuggets attempted to move the ball in transition.

In a two-on-one scenario attacking the basket, Milton attempted to lay the ball up himself rather than pass to Niang, who was cutting to the basket. After getting his shot blocked, Niang lost his temper. Rather than keeping it on the court, Niang continued voicing his frustration on the bench during the timeout, which prompted Embiid to walk over and intervene. 

“I just told both of them to let it go,” Embiid said after the game. “We had a f****** game to win.” 

While Embiid wanted the situation to go away in the moment, looking back on the way everything transpired, the big man didn’t exactly see it as a negative experience for the team, even though it looked bad from the outside looking in.

“I think it’s good for the team, not a bad thing,” said Embiid. “Guys getting to each other, it makes us better. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing when teammates are going at each other. After the game, we’re all laughing. It is what it is. Those guys, you look at when Georges had a couple of threes in the second half, I think some of them came from Shake. Like I said, that’s how basketball goes, and you move on. At the end of the day, the angle is to win the game, and we did it.”

The situation was left in the past almost immediately. And in the second half, the Sixers went from trailing double digits to eventually getting out in front. By the end of the game, the Sixers had put the Nuggets away with a 126-119 victory.

Justin Grasso covers the Philadelphia 76ers for All76ers, a Sports Illustrated channel. You can follow him for live updates on Twitter: @JGrasso_.