Why Philadelphia 76ers Joel Embiid Is a Social Media Genius
Joel Embiid desperately wants to play in the NBA All-Star Game next month. While you wouldn’t expect someone from the second worst team in the NBA to be worthy of a spot, he actually has a pretty good chance. Even on a minutes restriction this season, he’s putting up numbers we’ve grown accustomed to seeing from legends like Shaquille O’Neal, Yao Ming and Hakeem Olajuwon. The Philadelphia 76ers have also been competitive with him on the court by posting a net rating of -1.4 compared to -10.8 when he’s on the bench.
Those are just the bare bones when it comes to his case, but it looks like fans want to see Embiid in the game as well. In the first voting returns, Embiid finished behind only LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kevin Love in voting amongst frontcourt players in the Eastern Conference. He even received more general votes than established players like Chris Paul, Damian Lillard, Carmelo Anthony and DeMarcus Cousins.
It probably helps Embiid that he can use social media to his advantage when it comes to getting extra votes. A tweet two weeks ago, in which he revealed making the All-Star Game would help him be with his mystery crush, clocked in 51,000 votes in the form of retweets. He then used Donald Trump’s Twitter handle on Thursday to dupe followers into thinking he had the support of the President-elect, which currently has 13,000 retweets and counting, once he saw how much ground he still has to make.
WOWWW RT @realDonaldTrump Joel Embiid #NBAVote
— Joel Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) January 5, 2017
Other things you’ll find from Embiid on Twitter: Him bragging about being undefeated in the New Year, a photo of him wearing a “I feel like Jojo” shirt and a tweet about America tanking. He really is the gift that keeps on giving. And for that alone, maybe he does deserve to be an All-Star this season.