Paul Reed, teammate of Joel Embiid, calls Anthony Davis a ‘big flopper’

Ahead of their matchup with the Lakers on Monday, Sixers center Paul Reed bizarrely called Anthony Davis a flopper.

There have been a lot of titles attached to Anthony Davis throughout the years, some fair and many others not. He’s been one of the league’s best defenders for multiple years running, can be one of the more dominant big men in the league and, to be fair, can see his performance level come and go at times.

He’s been prone to injury, though a label of injury-prone often feels unfair given how many of those have come about. He’s also been called much worse by certain often-grumpy former big men who appear weekly as part of a certain station’s NBA coverage.

What he’s never been called before, though, is a flopper. Until Monday, that is.

During shootaround ahead of the Sixers’ game at home against the Lakers, Philly backup big man Paul Reed took one of the weirder shots at AD.

Allow me to collectively respond for most Lakers fans when I say...

HUH?!?!

First, let’s address the elephant in the room. Paul Reed is teammates with Joel Embiid. There really doesn’t need to be much more explanation than that. There is probably not a current player in the NBA that fans more universally agree flops than Embiid.

And, to be fair I suppose, it works for him. Embiid leads the league in free throw attempts at 176 in 15 games, or an average of 11.7 per game. Comparatively, that’s very nearly more than LeBron James (6.1) and Anthony Davis (5.9) shoot combined per game.

Again, though, to circle back to the topic of Reed’s quote, Davis doesn’t flop. If he did, he’d be higher than 20th in the league in free throw attempts.

The only two players with more post-ups than Davis this year are Nikola Jokic and Embiid, both of whom rank higher than AD in free throw attempts. The only players with more points in the paint this year are Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo, both of whom rank higher than AD in free throw attempts.

If anything, AD should maybe flop a little bit more to get to the foul line.

I’m not the rule maker here, but if I were, anyone who is a teammate of Embiid’s isn’t allowed to call an opponent a flopper. That’d be like a teammate of Pat Bev’s admonishing an opponent for celebrating too much. It just lacks an incredible amount of self-awareness.

And it isn’t even true!

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.