Time to trim haircut hassling of Embiid, Simmons

Haircuts? They got haircuts? In the middle of (well, OK, hopefully near the other side of) a pandemic?

What were those crazy Sixers kids Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons thinking? Just because All-Star Weekend was coming up, they wanted to look dazzling in downtown Atlanta?

Have their personal barber break out the silver-plated snippers and the roto-razors and perform a little pre-festivities magic on them, just a day before they were to hop on private jets to the trip to Atlanta?

WTFollicle?

Actually, torrid Twitter tongues, it didn’t really go like that.

Gossip details are sketchy, but somewhat serious reports from early Sunday said the Sixers teammates share the same stylist, who apparently cut only one of their respective domes. That happened a day or two prior to said stylist getting an inconclusive coronavirus testing result, and the stylist was apparently awaiting a second test.

However, it also means it was possible that either of the two Sixers stars had been exposed during his time in the barber’s chair. This had been unknown to the two Sixers, who had since left on separate private planes to join what

was to be a star-studded NBA bubble in Atlanta, in which participants were quarantining by themselves.

For Embiid and/or Simmons, it was nothing to get hair-rassed over. Simply put, it’s unfortunate. A scissor-stroke of bad luck. (And if I had to guess, I’d say it was Simmons who wanted the haircut since he never seems to have his perfect pate out of place, as opposed to the occasional Embiid freestyle ‘do. But we digress...)

Because there has already been so much criticism of the league for having a one-day All-Star extravaganza with a real risk of it turning into a superspreader event among the league’s best players, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and his league lieutenants had put a host of preventive measures in place, including keeping the players separate except during the game and skills competitions.

What they’ve done so far this season has worked out pretty well. Yes, there have been positive tests and exposures and players missing games and even a few forced cancellations. But nothing as bad as what college basketball has subjected its non-paid players to, and also nothing as schedule-rattling as what the NHL has experienced this season.

As Silver proudly proclaimed during his midseason address Saturday, in terms of the first half of the 2020-21 season, “it went essentially as we had expected. We ended up playing 95 percent of our games. We knew we were going to get positive cases for players and staff members operating out of the bubble. I felt our protocols held up as well as we could have hoped.”

He cited the decision to have the schedule divided into halves as giving the league the schedule flexibility to move games when necessary.

He could also trumpet the lowering of the rate of new coronavirus cases across the country and increased vaccinations in looking ahead to what he feels will be a more open playoff season. All well and good, but surely there will be other problems on the horizon, so as much caution has to be practiced as possible.

So why have an All-Star Game in the first place?

“It has more to do with the larger brand value of the NBA,” said Silver, who sources say did not visit his stylist prior to the weekend. “The fact is this is our No. 1 fan engagement event of the year. Because we went forward with All-Star (Weekend), not only did roughly 100 million people vote for the All-Stars on a global basis, but based on past ratings, well over 100 million people will watch the game and the ancillary competitions. We’ll have over a billion social media views and engagements.

“It’s sort of what we do,” Silver added. “For me, it would have been a bigger deal not to have it.”

OK, so it’s about TV and social media traffic. Fine.

And it went on as scheduled, even if Sixers coach Doc Rivers, coaching one of those Team Star-Guy-Name sides, wasn’t able to be on the floor with Embiid and Simmons. The Doc hasn’t had any contact with them since before the haircut in question, so he was spared any contact tracing measures.

For Simmons and Embiid, however, all fingers are crossed that they won’t have any positive problems going forward.

There’s been enough bad luck around this team in the past to have it disrupt what thus far has been an All-Star basketball season in Philadelphia.