A wild night in Philadelphia saw the 76ers pull off a 111-106 win against San Antonio, but the victory was overshadowed by chaos and confusion on the court.
Joel Embiid, the Sixers’ superstar center, got tossed from the game after a heated exchange with referee Jenny Schroeder. It was only the second ejection of his career.
The drama unfolded with about three minutes left in the second quarter. Embiid was charging down the court when he collided with Spurs rookie Victor Wembanyama, sending the 20-year-old crashing to the floor. The refs called it a charge.
Embiid wasn’t having it. He argued the call so intensely that Schroeder hit him with a technical foul. Things only got worse from there.
As he headed to the bench, Embiid was still fuming. His teammate Kyle Lowry and coach Nick Nurse tried to hold him back, but the former MVP kept going. Schroeder quickly handed him a second technical, and just like that, he was done for the night.
“The whole thing was really strange,” Nurse said after the game. He never got a clear explanation for the ejection.
But that wasn’t even the weirdest part of the night.
Andre Drummond, Embiid’s backup, got ejected too – then un-ejected. He’d accidentally stepped on Wembanyama’s foot, sending the Spurs rookie to the floor again. The refs initially tossed him, but after review, they called him back from the locker room.
TV cameras caught Drummond sprinting back through the tunnel, trying to put his jersey on as he ran.
“I just fell,” Wembanyama said later, shrugging off the incident. “I didn’t expect the foul to be called.”
Spurs interim coach Mitch Johnson, filling in while Gregg Popovich recovers from a stroke, seemed equally puzzled by the whole sequence. “I don’t think it was a foul on them, and I don’t think it was a flop,” he said.
Despite all the chaos, the Sixers managed to pull out the win – though they probably wouldn’t mind a slightly less eventful game next time.
