Incoming Philly coach Nick Nurse and regular season MVP Joel Embiid have had their fair share of beef but now the pair will combine forces.
The two have gone head-to-head plenty of times in the past five seasons with Nurse as Toronto’s coach.
And one of the most notable encounters came in the 2022 postseason.
Embiid had more free throws than the entire Raptors team during that game and Nurse was complaining about it to the refs, so Embiid told him to “stop bitching”
Embiid was telling Nick Nurse to stop bitching about calls here.
Brings me back to the Eastern Conference semis two years ago. Nobody bitches about calls more than Nick Nurse. Not Lebron, nobody. pic.twitter.com/GExCnVVham
— Boston Sports Gordo (@BOSSportsGordo) April 19, 2022
“[Nurse] is a great coach, what he has been able to accomplish, I have always been a big fan, but I told him, respectfully, to stop bitching about calls,” Embiid said at the time.
A more recent jab Embiid took at Nurse was in Philly’s first round series of this postseason against the Nets.
Embiid rekindled the beef when he compared Brooklyn coach Jacque Vaughn to Nurse as he called for fouls against Embiid.
Now, Nurse is at the helm of the Sixers and despite their little beef, he explained that he has a huge amount of respect for big man Embiid.
“I think that it’s been an interesting experience coaching against Joel,” Nurse said. “We threw everything almost I think you could possibly throw at a guy, because it was that hard for us to try to stop him. So we threw a lot at him. So at least I think that we can offensively say this is what we did and here’s how we can beat it. And we’ve almost covered [almost everything].
“The rest of that, it’s just, well, it’s a little bit entertaining for me. I understand there was some exchanges and things … when you’re out there and you’re in the heat of really competing, I didn’t even really remember them. But I accidentally had my TV on yesterday and I saw a couple of them, and they were pretty good.
“It kind of grew to such a – for me anyway – respect level of him. We’d throw one thing and literally even in that playoff series a game later, he would adjust to it and we couldn’t do it.”
Nurse, Embiid and the rest of the Sixers franchise will be hoping to make it past the second round of the playoffs in the 2023-24 postseason, something the team has struggled to do the last six seasons.
Read more: NBA Insider Thinks Kyrie & James Harden Trade Rumors are Cap