Joel Embiid gets technical after scuffle with Tolu Smith

With 1:25 left in the 2nd quarter, after the whistle on a Sixers possession, Embiid and Smith were in each other's faces and the game stopped.

That's the order of events that matters. By McMenamin's read, Smith shoved Embiid in the back first and Embiid answered with the elbow. Not everyone in the building saw it that way. From press row in Detroit, the read was that Embiid shoved first after Smith knocked the ball out of his hands. Either way it turned into a pile of grabbing and pushing before teammates pulled the 2 bigs apart, with both of them still yelling.

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@ClutchPoints

Joel Embiid and Tolu Smith get into a heated exchange during the Sixers-Pistons game 👀 Embiid was hit with a technical foul for "initiating" the altercation.

The officials went to the tape, and Marc Davis came back with one name. Embiid got the technical for "initiating" the altercation. Smith got nothing. Cade Cunningham hit the technical free throw. You can argue about who threw the first shove, but the refs decided the elbow was the escalation, and the elbow belonged to Embiid.

Little Caesars Arena had been loud all night, and that chant was the payoff. Embiid looked like he enjoyed it, too: he was seen egging on the boos. That's vintage Joel. He has spent a decade as the villain in most road buildings in the East, and a Detroit crowd that just watched its team beat Philly a couple of weeks ago was happy to give him the full treatment.

There's real heat in this matchup. Detroit beat the Sixers 106-93 on October 25 in a game Embiid and VJ Edgecombe both missed. That was Philadelphia's only loss. Philly came in 7-1 going for a 5th straight win, and Detroit came in 6-1 on a 3-game streak. Embiid played through a right foot problem that had limited him the night before. Getting into a shoving match while managing a sore foot isn't how you'd draw it up, but nobody has ever accused him of backing down.

On the scoreboard, the scuffle didn't hurt Philly. The Sixers took a 56-42 lead into halftime. The thing to watch from here is whether the league looks harder at the elbow. For now it's 1 technical, 1 chant, and one more reason these 2 teams don't like each other.