‘They’re jealous of one another’: The Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid rift at centre of Philadelphia 76ers turmoil

We knew the problems with the Philadelphia 76ers spilled off the court, but now the extent of it is become a lot clearer — and it starts at the top.

Simmons and Embiid are apparently jealous of each other.

We knew the problems with the Philadelphia 76ers spilled off the court, but now the extent of it is become a lot clearer — and it starts at the top.

It was on Thursday (AEDT) when Al Horford came out and said that the team was dealing with issues behind the scenes, and we’ve learned more about what he meant by that.

A reported rift between Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid — it’s not the first time we’ve heard of this — was compounded by news that Josh Richardson led a players-only meeting, for a team that’s wildly underachieving at 31-20 on the season; good for sixth in the Eastern Conference.

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On Fox Sports’ The Herd, Chris Broussard mentioned that Simmons and Embiid were ‘jealous’ of each other, stemming from each player’s desire to be the man of the team.

“In the locker room, Embiid wants to be the man. Simmons wants to be the man; they are jealous of one another,” Broussard said.

“They are jealous of the spotlight that one another gets not recognising that they both get the spotlight! They’re both superstars! They both seem to be more concerned. . . according to people in that situation, they both want to be more celebrity than superstar basketball players.”

The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported that Richardson was the instigator for the players-only meeting.

“(Richardson) essentially told the team, listen, we’ve all gotta come together, and it starts with Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid,” Charania said.

“Everyone across the Sixers understands that, and now they have the second half, where these guys really need to step up, and it’s going to be internal.”

The supposed animosity between Simmons and Embiid has something hit the public domain, too, with the All-Star centre recently taking a veiled shot at his Australian teammate.

Will the 76ers go down in flames?

“We just got to look at ourselves and see what we can do individually, we’ve got to help each other even if it means being outside of your comfort zone for the greater [good] to help the team win,” Embiid told reporters last month, in the wake of a three-game losing streak that included a New Year’s Eve blowout loss to the Pacers.

“Meaning that, if you’ve got to space and shoot it, you’ve got to do it. We need everybody to buy into that and we’ll be fine, we’re going to be fine. We’re still finding our groove, we haven’t been totally healthy, the whole starting lineup. Like I said, we’ll be fine.”

That comment addressed the on-court issue, which is obvious. The 76ers have two players who can expertly score inside the paint, but lack the spacing to fully extract the talent from either of them. The consensus is that both players would benefit from having a team built around them individually, but that’s not on the cards any time soon.

The off-court issues are more superficial, but clearly something the team has tried to address.

“I’m told that other players talked to them as some sort of players meeting, or something like that where they talked to Embiid and Simmons were like ‘Look, you guys gotta lead us, you gotta get it together we should be much better’,” Broussard said.

“Embiid and Simmons accepted that, but we’ll see how it plays out on the court.”

Originally published as ‘They’re jealous of one another’: The Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid rift at centre of Philadelphia 76ers turmoil