No, Joel Embiid’s Charmin Tweet Was Not About Ben Simmons

Joel Embiid has never been afraid of stirring things up on social media — hell, he even goes by “Troel” on Twitter — but on Thursday night a tweet by the Sixers big man got confused by many as him calling out Ben Simmons when, in fact, he was simply catching up on the AFCON semifinal between Cameroon and Egypt that he missed the end of due to the Sixers’ flight to Dallas.

In what became the first in a string of tweets about Cameroon’s meltdown in penalty kicks against Egypt, in which they missed three out of four attempts to lose, Embiid simply tweeted a photo of Charmin Ultra Soft toilet paper.

Given that yesterday featured a report that Ben Simmons was upset that Embiid put blame on him after last year’s playoffs when Simmons felt he could’ve done the same to Embiid in 2019 and didn’t, it was understandable why people would’ve immediately jumped to the thought that Embiid was finally fed up enough with the situation to call out his longtime teammate. However, as Embiid continued tweeting, it became clear that this wasn’t a vicious subtweet of Simmons, but simply the Cameroon native expressing his frustrations with his beloved national soccer squad fumbling away a chance at an AFCON final with dreadful penalty kicks.

For those hoping for an escalation of the current cold war in Philly between the Sixers and Simmons, I’m sorry to disappoint you. However, I’m sure Embiid also knew what he was doing when he led with that, allowing people’s minds to race to Simmons before he continued on to make clear it was about Cameroon’s AFCON tournament run ending in disappointing fashion.