If there is one lesson to be taken from the Drew League, then it is that the players competing in the tournament aren’t to be underestimated. They gave LeBron James and DeMar DeRozan a run for their money last week before narrowly losing 104-102, but the latest NBA duo to feature weren’t so fortunate.
It was announced yesterday that Hawks teammates Trae Young and John Collins were teaming up in the Drew League for Black Pearl Elite after Trae had previously expressed his desire to take part in the competition after watching LeBron. While the game promised some fireworks, Young and Collins ended up suffering a shock 103-100 defeat to the Citi Team Blazers.
Trae had a decent but inefficient outing as he scored 22 points on 7-16 shooting with 7 steals, but Collins had a rough night as he became the first NBA player in Drew League history to foul out while finishing with 16 points on 6-16 shooting.
tough day for john collins at the drew league. got postered, became the 1st nba player to foul out at the drew & he & trae young’s squad lost 😬 pic.twitter.com/uSMsXEkuVL
— buckets (@buckets) July 24, 2022
He also got dunked on in the game as NBA Twitter roasted Collins for his poor showing and Joel Embiid also liked that tweet which was clowning on the Hawks big man.
These two have had their issues in the past and actually clashed during the Eastern Conference Semifinals last year. In Game 6 of that series, Collins had a monster dunk on Embiid and the two got into a scuffle later in the game, which resulted in technicals. Collins added more fuel to the fire by wearing a shirt of him posterizing Embiid in the press conference a couple of days later and it’s safe to say Joel hasn’t forgotten any of that.
He got his chance here to pile on and took full advantage of it. It just ended up being a rough night all around for Collins, who is definitely not going to look back fondly on his tournament debut.
