The Tortured Players Department

Joel Embiid is down bad

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The day that Taylor Swift dropped The Tortured Poets Department, we did a very dumb — and I’m not just saying this because it was my idea — but brilliant bit on Oddball. We called it The Tortured Players Department, and chose the most tortured star from each NBA playoff team.

(For what it’s worth, the end of this episode is worth watching; our production team crushed it….and us).

A lot of guys have seemed tortured this year in the NBA. Draymond Green choked out Rudy Gobert, got suspended for twelve games, and had to go to therapy. Rudy Gobert got choked out and then claimed that other players don’t like him because they’re just jealous (debatable!). Damian Lillard wanted to play for Miami, got traded to Milwuakee (arguably the opposite of Miami!), and said that he “doesn’t have much of a life there.”

I could go on, and I will, because this is my newsletter: LeBron James is about to get swept by the Nuggets in the first round of the playoffs and his 21st year in the league (“it’s just basketball,” he said, lying through his teeth). P.J. Tucker got caught up in the James Harden drama, complained about it, and got fined $75,000 for publicly saying he’d like to be traded (for more on that last one, please check out

Madeline Hill

’s fantastic NBA regular season gossip round-up, to which I was honored to contribute!).

After last night’s Knicks-Sixers game, I would argue that Joel Embiid is the most tortured of all the players. Because, to quote the people you went to high school with who now cryptically post therapy-speak quotes on their Instagram stories, “hurt people hurt people.”

Here are some of the dirty plays Embiid dished out last night during Game 3 of the Sixers’ first round series against the Knicks: He elbowed Isaiah Hartenstein in the kidney, kicked Hartenstein in the balls, kicked Mitchell Robinson in the balls, knocked OG Anounoby over in the backcourt, and was generally whacking guys left and right.

But the Magnum Opus foul was when Embiid pulled Robinson down by the legs while Robinson was in mid-air, causing him to crash to the ground. Knicks fans — including the one I’m married to — were irate. The internet erupted with New Yorkers who believed Embiid should’ve been tossed from the game and perhaps even suspended. The Empire State Building even banned Embiid on Twitter.

After the game, in which Embiid dropped fifty points, it was revealed that he has been dealing with a case of Bells Palsy over the past week. Bells Palsy is a condition that suddenly weakens the muscles on one side of the face, causing it to droop. You should read

Tom Haberstroh

’s breakdown of why it was a big deal that the Sixers concealed this news from the public, especially since the team has a history of doing so. Usually with Embiid.