It appeared that Joel Embiid and Shake Milton had a confrontation Saturday night after the first quarter of the Sixers’ opening seeding game at Disney World against the Pacers.
Milton was held back by Matisse Thybulle after exchanging words with Embiid following the first period. The Sixers trailed 35-29 after the first and had eight turnovers.
You can see the incident in the video above.
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Embiid also seemed to have yelled something in Milton’s direction following a turnover forced by T.J. McConnell in the backcourt.
Heading into the Sixers’ eight seeding games, Brett Brown had predicted that Milton, his new starting point guard, would encounter plenty of physicality and ball pressure. He thought McConnell and Indiana would provide an especially difficult challenge in that respect.
“I think for sure it’s as good a test as you can find," he said. "... You’re going to see defensive players play a lot of run-slide-run, slide-run-slide, full-court pressure — stuff that you would think you might see more in a college game than perhaps an NBA game, I’m anticipating. And if I’m wrong, no harm.
"But it’s not anything that we feel we’re going to get surprised by. How we handle that, I won’t go through now, but we’ve talked about it, we’ve practiced against it. And yes, I think especially because of T.J. … and I think that it’s going to extend to other teams, not just Indiana.”
NBA
During the Sixers’ second training camp of sorts in Florida, Embiid had praised the 23-year-old Milton. He was, in fact, the first to reveal the starting lineup change.
"He’s been amazing,” Embiid said of Milton on July 13. “He’s been the starting point guard. I think he has a huge opportunity to help us accomplish what we believe we can. He’s been doing an amazing job, just running the team, and we're going to need him to knock down shots, which he did before the league basically got shut down. He was on a roll. So we all need him to keep it going. But it’s been great.”
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