Joel Embiid “furious,” he and Paul George both want to find out who leaked team meeting details

It wasn’t exactly a secret that the 76ers had a team meeting Monday night after falling to 2-11 — they didn’t open the locker room for about an hour after the game and didn’t talk to the media until then.

But what Joel Embiid and Paul George have fired up is that some of the details from that meeting leaked out. One of those details was how Tyrese Maxey told Embiid that the former MVP needed to set a better example by showing up on time to team meetings and events, the tidbit that headlined the meeting. Embiid took responsibility for setting the tone, but was upset that he became the story.

It wasn’t just Embiid who was mad, on “Podcast P with Paul George,” The 76ers wing echoed Embiid’s sentiments.

“The conversation should never have just been leaked, period. It wasn’t even like it was a meeting that went in the direction of the blame game or people confronting to that degree. You know what I mean? So it never should have been to Ud, period, whether you want to believe it’s to motivate the media or not, it wasn’t the type of conversation that was leaked I can see if there were two guys challenging each other and loudly arguing back and forth and it was overheard and now something was leaked but it wasn’t that type of energy in there so I don’t know why or how it was leaked.

Details of these closed-door meetings always end up in the media, and usually in the same way: When it ends, players call their agents to talk (or vent) about it, and then it’s the agents who spin things to the media for to put their player in the best light. Sometimes a player or coach will leak things for strategic purposes, but somehow the content of the meeting tends to get out.

The idea of ​​Maxey calling out Embiid was blown out of proportion — welcome to social media — but it also fit a pattern of what we heard behind closed doors. Embiid reportedly said at one point that he didn’t
fully understands what the team was trying to do on offense, while other players told Nick Nurse they wanted to be coached harder. It sounded like a mixture of frustration and organizational dysfunction. There are plenty of new players, a top-heavy roster with three stars who have played just six minutes combined this season (and won’t add to that total for at least a few more games with George suffering another bone bruise), role players who haven’t stepped up, and it’s led to the worst offense in the league so far.

Start winning and there won’t be a need for more of these team meetings or the stress of leaking out of them.