NBA MVP Candidate Joel Embiid Orders His Steak Like a Rookie

The star 7-footer is a rare talent in pro basketball, but that's not the way he orders his steak, unfortunately for him

Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse. In a story at The Athletic, it was revealed that Embiid likes his steak well-done and even "burnt."
Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers is hurt really bad — and so are his fans
Jason Miller/Getty

Like Donald Trump, who marked the start of his run as the 45th president of the United States by ordering a $54 dry-aged steak well-done and then eating it with ketchup, and 12% of misguided Americans, Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers wants his meat cooked to a crisp.

That’s just one of the details from a new piece in The Athletic about the star 7-footer, but it’s truly a sad one for the 28-year-old MVP candidate.

In addition to being a big enough fan of the Shirley Temple that he will order a full pitcher of the alcohol-free drink when he goes out to eat, Embiid apparently likes his steak cooked to the point that it is “burnt,” according to his 76ers teammate Tobias Harris.

“He likes his steak burnt, which is like super disrespectful,” Harris told The Athletic. “We were at a very well-known steakhouse. He asks for the steak to be burnt, burnt. And the chef came out and was like he’s not burning the steak, that’s like against his chef code…(Joel) was disappointed and he was like, ‘I don’t want to eat here anymore.’”

And steak apparently isn’t the only food that Embiid likes “burnt,” as former Sixers forward Amir Johnson revealed. “Everything had to be extra, extra, extra, extra, extra, extra well done,” Johnson said. “My man used to love his wings well done. When we’d get on the team plane, he’d try to have the flight attendants put them in this airplane oven, which doesn’t cook, it just warms it up. We’d be on like a five-hour flight and his wings would be in the oven the whole time.”

Embiid is a phenomenal basketball player and a really entertaining guy, but clearly he has a lot to learn about life. At least his first Philly cheesesteak looked normal…

“A person who won’t eat his steak any doneness but well is a person who won’t entertain the notion that there could be a better way; a person who blankets the whole thing in ketchup (a condiment that adds back much of the moisture, sweetness, and flavor that the overcooking removed in the first place) is always going to fix his problems by making them worse,” Eater wrote of Trump’s steak preferences in 2017. “A person who refuses to try something better is a person who will never make things good.”

Given that, it’s probably best to bet on Nikola Jokic (-280) to win the MVP, his second, over Embiid (+230).

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