Embiid–Towns Fight and IG Tag of Butler

On October 30, 2019, during a Philadelphia 76ers blowout of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Joel Embiid and Karl-Anthony Towns tangled under the basket in the third quarter. According to NBA.com’s recap, “The Sixers were leading 75-55 ... when Embiid and Towns went at it. ... After they got tangled under the basket, Embiid shoved Towns, who answered with a punch that missed” [5]. Both were ejected. The next beat unfolded online. Embiid posted on Instagram afterward: “Great team win!!! I was raised around lions and a cat pulled on me tonight lmao @jimmybutler ...” and capped his message with, “It’s a known thing that I OWN YOU” [10]. The post both belittled Towns and explicitly tagged Butler, their former teammate, re-inserting Butler into Towns’ public narrative a year after the Minnesota split [10]. Coverage documented Towns’ IG responses. The Philadelphia Inquirer noted Towns “tagging his location as ‘All Bark & No Bite,’” and posting lines like “I aIN’t nO B***** RaiSeD ARoUnD LiOnS,” pushing back at Embiid’s framing [10]. CBS Sports highlighted how Embiid “not only called Towns a ‘cat,’ ... but even invoked their mutual former teammate, Jimmy Butler,” linking the scuffle to the broader Butler–Towns storyline [4]. In short order, an in-game physical altercation turned into a social-media crossfire, with Butler’s tag serving as a pointed reference to questions about Towns’ edge that had surfaced during the 2018 Minnesota saga [4][10].

Although Butler did not play in the game, Embiid’s decision to tag @jimmybutler tied Towns’ confrontation to Butler’s past critiques about toughness and competitiveness. The fight and subsequent posts showed how the Butler–Towns narrative had become league shorthand—so much so that a third party used Butler’s name to score rhetorical points on Towns a year later [4][10]. For the ongoing rivalry, it demonstrated that their 2018 conflict had residual power in how peers and media discussed Towns and that Butler remained a specter in Towns-related disputes [5][10].

The league disciplined Embiid and Towns following the altercation, while the online back-and-forth prolonged the spotlight on Towns’ temperament and rivalries [5][10]. The Butler reference did not fade: in May 2021, when Butler and Towns met on-court, broadcast mics captured Butler calling Towns “soft as baby s—t,” with Towns replying, “Call Rachel Nichols,” explicitly reviving their 2018 media moment [6][9]. The Embiid tag thus acted as a bridge episode, keeping Butler’s critique in circulation as Towns’ reputation battles extended to new markets and opponents [4][6][9][10].