Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers are in Fort Collins where they are holding their training camp ahead of the upcoming 2023-24 NBA season. And since they are in Colorado, it's going to be especially hard for them to avoid seeing anything Deion Sanders. In fact, they have already met the man himself, with the Colorado football head coach joining Embiid and the Sixers for a dinner.

To be precise, the Sixers are having their training camp at Colorado State, the campus of the team that Sanders' Buffaloes defeated in a testy matchup a couple of weeks ago.

With Sixers players around him, Sanders did not hold back telling everyone that he always wants to watch Embiid go head to head against someone like Denver Nuggets big man Nikola Jokic.

“A lot of folks duck that smoke right now, they want to be a tallest man on paper,” Sanders said in front of the Sixers. “Don’t sell me a game and tell me I’m going to get it then when I turn on the TV I don’t get it. I don’t like it. If Embiid is playing the Joker, I want to see Embiid vs. the Joker. I want to see it. He goes and gets it, right? I love the matchup but I want to see that, that’s why I stayed up.”

It can be recalled that Embiid sat out what would have been a marquee matchup against Jokic and the Nuggets in a game in Denver last season. Embiid and Jokic were then the top two contenders for the Most Valuable Player award, with the Sixers star edging the latter to snap the two-year reign of the Serbian.