The NBA and Joel Embiid bring the petty to London

Petty. It’s not just for Toms any more. That’s because he’s dead. In London, on the other hand, Joel Embiid jumped really high in the air to basko-smack.

If those words up there made any sense to you, that’s because you’re probably a basketball fan and also kind of strange. That probably means you think Joel Embiid is the greatest cultural force to hit our lives since that one sharknado movie where the sharks spoke English, and were bipedal, and started their own grassroots political movement. I didn’t see that one myself. Judging by the GIFs I’ve seen on Twitter, I bet it was fine.

But since Joel Embiid isn’t fictional in most important senses, it seems like a good idea to put him on an international stage. Let’s export some of that Embiid experience to London.

An Embiid experience comes in many different shapes. The size usually the same: about 7’0″ not including excellent hair. The shape is the variable. Sometimes it’s the shape of a straight-away three. Sometimes it’s beastly defense. Other times it’s a dunk with funk.

Yesterday, it was pettiness. Pettiness usually isn’t a good thing, but Joel Embiid did it, so it is. He can redefine commonalities of existence like that. He’s that powerful.

Watch him go:

That was a gift. Not only to us the viewers who got to watch a quick transition from “screw you and your pointless shot,” to “Oh hell,” but also to the faceless Celtics pusher-person (I don’t know his name because the only name I know is Joel Embiid) who got a free half second of his life without seven feet of terror barreling at him. A lot can happen in half a second. I just blinked six times, for example.

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The clip cut off before it reached the point where Embiid hit a rather sloppy but still impressive hurricanrana on Brad Stephens, but that feels less important somehow.