Drama, Drama, Drama

The NBA has never had more soap opera and rivalry. It’s fantastic.

- Will Leitch

In January, Joel Embiid, the Philadelphia 76ers’ seven-foot-tall, 23-year-old Twitter-fanatic man-child, pulled off one of those dunks that we would have called “posterizing” in 1997 but now, in a world without posters and wallpapered instead with video games, inevitably leads to one of those memes where Mortal Kombat music plays and the words finish him flash across the screen. Embiid, a massive man with supernatural athleticism, drove down the lane and, upon seeing defending MVP Russell Westbrook—a gleefully selfish sports villain and noted sartorial virtuoso—slipping underneath to draw a charge, exploded with such fury and violence that Westbrook essentially evaporated into a plume of smoke. Embiid stared at Westbrook jogging back on defense as the Oklahoma crowd stood, mouths agape, as if they’d just lost on a last-second buzzer-beater. (It was the first quarter.) ESPN’s Pablo Torre joked on Twitter, “Someone pls edit that Embiid dunk so that coins fly out of Westbrook’s body when he hits the floor.”

Later, after Westbrook’s teammate Paul George attempted (unsuccessfully) to dunk on Embiid, he admitted it was in revenge, and as the game ended, Westbrook dribbled out the clock while staring directly at Embiid. Afterward, Embiid called the play a “crime scene investigation” on Instagram, and Westbrook intimated that the feud between the players would continue at the All-Star Game. And the NBA world rejoiced, because, yes, we had a new NBA beef. The NBA is now a league run by beefs, and it is glorious. As the NBA season concludes and enters another thrilling set of playoffs, it must be asked again: What have we ever done to deserve a league this entertaining?