The Best Thing That Happened This Week: Joel Embiid Dances

Check out the videos below of Joel Embiid dancing. Pictured: Embiid at a game against the Brooklyn Nets earlier this year. Photograph by AP Photo/Chris Szagola

What a glum world we live in. Halloween, a West Chester prof declares, is sexist. A decorated war hero, Republicans say, is a traitor. Kids are getting dumber. California is burning. Philadelphia is sinking. God, where’s the joy, you know?

We’ll tell you where the joy was on Monday — at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, when the Sixers met the Hawks for their third game of the young season. Joel Embiid hadn’t played in the prior game, hampered by a sore ankle, possibly earned because he seems to spend large portions of every game he plays in diving onto the floor from his considerable height of seven feet.

Pray for his body parts.

Because Joel Embiid clearly loves what he does — loves it with the sort of deep, abiding joy that’s all too rare anymore. On Monday night, while doing his job, Embiid threw down a monster dunk on the Hawks’ John Collins. And then he … shimmied. Danced. Just for the fun of it. Because what he’d just done felt grand, and he needed to express that, and dancing seemed like the right way to do so.

The refs promptly teed him up.

Joel Embiid slam and shimmy on John Collins (3 angles) pic.twitter.com/J6221VFYPC

— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) October 29, 2019

Joel later scored two free throws to win the game. He had 36 points and 13 rebounds.

Joel Embiid shimmy for the camera #HereTheyCome pic.twitter.com/j6XRKxNGPn

— NBA Daily Clips (@viral_nba) October 29, 2019

We should be dancing. We don’t deserve this man.

Oh, and he also likes to wrestle.