A History Lesson On The Karl-Anthony Towns vs Joel Embiid Beef

We all know what happened last night. KAT and Joel got into their little skirmish with eye gouges and choke holds. It was close to being a full on fight, but what it did was really let the world know about this beef. This has actually been a few years in the making, let’s get into the history lesson.

Jan. 3, 2017

Joel Embiid starts the whole Joel Embiid experience. By that I mean he’s going to troll you. He’s going to egg people on. He’s going to play in the crowd. That’s part of what makes him, him. He wants to annoy you. So naturally when KAT gets a technical, Embiid enjoys it.

December 13, 2017

This is where we really get cooking. This is where Embiid first takes it to social media and we know once it’s there, anything can happen. Embiid hit Towns with a Eurostep and it was a legit Eurostep.

A nice move, for sure. But remember who we’re talking about here. Joel Embiid. The guy is a monster troll. Also throw in the fact that he and KAT had the same rookie year with Embiid sitting out his first one. So of course he gave us this:

What you might not see in that original picture is the response by KAT. That’s right he went full comment section.

And you see Joel’s response. This was the first, oh these guys are going to be social media tough. But it let us in on the start of this beef between two beefy big guys. It’s also very much THIS LEAGUE at this moment.

Last night

It finally all led to this moment. I mean look at these videos, captions and pictures.

Of course we get Instagram (hilarious reference by Embiid to Jimmy Butler and the infamous practice)

Long story short, these dudes do not like each other. This isn’t just the standard let’s go be boys after this. I also realize it’s not 90s basketball because there were no punches thrown and people went to social media.

But here we are. Two big guys that fucking hate each other.