Joel Embiid and Hasan Whiteside Took Their Twitter War Nuclear

To say both burgeoning NBA centers Hassan Whiteside and Joel Embiid have been creative in their use of social media would be a bit of an understatement. Embiid shot his shot with Rihanna via Twitter and famously shouted out deposed Sixers GM Sam Hinkie for drafting him.

Similarly, Whiteside has used Snapchat to try and recruit free agents to Miami and launch a mini-mystery about how a dead parrot ended up on his lawn.

Friday night, fans saw Embiid and Whiteside engaged in some high-level trash talk during a pretty nondescript preseason game between the Heat and Sixers that saw Embiid and the Sixers cruise to a 24-point win. At the 9:39 mark in the first quarter, Embiid drew a foul on Whiteside and hilariously motioned for the Heat coaching staff to take Whiteside out of the contest. The Heat staff obliged—not because of Embiid’s request, but likely because Whiteside drew four out of a possible six fouls in less than a full quarter of action.

Things more or less could’ve ended there, but Whiteside appeared to feel some kind of way about a few media outlets turning Embiid’s faux substitution request into a headline.

Whiteside was quick to reiterate that Embiid was 1-7 from the field, implying that his defensive efforts garner less media attention than the clickbait of asking for a substitution that was likely going to happen anyway.

Embiid naturally responded with a few clap backs of his own.

“Dude they had to take your ass out or you would’ve fouled out in 5 min...” Embiid tweeted. “And we’re talking about Preseason, not regular season..... #Softy.”

Whiteside then directed his ire at Bleacher Report for essentially running the same angle multiple other outlets ran, tweeting, “Funny how y’all don’t show me telling him the same and 1-7 shooting or the first 2 flops I mean blocks. Lol y’all fan boys I swear.”

And that’s when Embiid unloaded a full clip.

“And keep caring about stats and not your team success..... your +/- was ass @youngwhiteside #Softy,” Emiid tweeted. He then dropped a sorry, not sorry in the form of referencing Kevin Durant’s fake Twitter accounts.

“My bad y’all, I thought I was using my burner account #TheProcess,” Embiid tweeted.

Whiteside wasn’t done, and he didn’t hesitate to point out that “The Process” hasn’t been particularly durable.

Just for good measure, Embiid posted an Instagram photo, changed his location to Whiteside and wrote the following caption: