NEW YORK -- Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid said a recent report about LeBron James getting on him about being late to practice "is not true" and caused him to wonder why he was subject to the outside scrutiny.
"It sucks, but what can you do? It's unfortunate," Embiid said after making his preseason debut in Philadelphia's 114-108 loss to the Brooklyn Nets on Thursday night. "I don't know where that came from. It never happened.... I think we just got to focus on ourselves. There's going to be a lot of outside noise to pull us apart from what we're supposed to be and what we're supposed to accomplish. So, it's important that we stay together and we keep our [head] down."
During the fourth quarter of the Sixers' 120-97 win over the New York Knicks on Monday, longtime play-by-play announcer Mike Breen detailed on the MSG Networks broadcast what he had heard about James reacting to Embiid not making it onto the practice court on time.