Before Joel Embiid Conference Finals

About

Before Joel Embiid Conference Finals refers to a catchphrase used by basketball fans to mock Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid, who despite having a decorated playing career, has never helped his team reach the penultimate round of the NBA playoffs. Much like "We Got X Before GTA 6," the meme is often used in conjunction with trending and surprising news stories, intended to highlight how long it has taken Embiid to approach an NBA championship. Many of the tweets with the catchphrase also feature a video of Druski running.

Origin

Joel Embiid has been the starting center for the Philadelphia 76ers since 2016.^[1] From 2016-2024, Embiid has racked up multiple personal accolades, including winning the MVP award for the 2022-2023 season. However, his career has been plagued by injuries, which have at times hampered his ability to perform in the NBA playoffs. This combined with other factors has led to the Philadelphia 76ers never making it past the second round of the NBA playoffs during his career in Philadelphia.

During this period, some of Embiid's contemporaries, such as Karl-Anthony Towns and Kristaps Porzingis, succeeded in making the conference finals before he did, which led people to point out that these players had made the conference finals before Joel Embiid.

The earliest known tweet to use the phrase "Before Joel Embiid Conference Finals" in a more absurd way was posted on May 30th, 2024 by Twitter user @cookedbylbj^[2] after the New York Knicks defeated the 76ers in the first round of the 2024 playoffs. They wrote, "we really got Donald Trump in jail before Joel Embiid conference finals appearance im crying," gaining 50 likes in four months.

Spread

Over the following months, the phrase became increasingly common as a joke about every current news story. For example, on July 24th, 2024, Twitter user @PlayoffBoundNYK^[3] posted a joke with the phrase about Amazon landing a deal to broadcast conference finals games, gaining over 90 retweets and 4,200 likes in two months. The tweet also uses a video of Druski running, which had become a common part of the meme by that point.

On July 27th, user @SixthManJake^[4] used the joke to comment on Robert Downey Jr. getting cast as Doom, gaining over 4,000 retweets and 50,000 likes in the same time frame.

On October 1st, 2024, Twitter user @xpjhx1^[5] posted the joke in reaction to news of President Jimmy Carter's 100th birthday, gaining over 7,000 retweets and 106,000 likes in one day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References