Rihanna Leaves 76ers All-Star Joel Embiid Cold as NBA Star Opts to 'Move on to the Next One'

Joel Embiid had a Joel Embiid kind of Thursday night.

Embiid, the Philadelphia 76ers center, was named as an NBA All-Star for the first time on Thursday, before the 76ers played the Boston Celtics at TD Garden.

"Like somebody just gave one of your children a star and put it on his paper. It's true," was how 76ers head coach Brett Brown described the third overall pick from 2014's elevation to rarefied NBA status in quotes reported by ESPN.

"He's [Embiid] gone through a lot. To think that somebody that's played—what is it, 65 games? Just from that small sample size is now on the All-Star team and starting?"

Embiid then hung 26 points and 16 rebounds on the Celtics, as Philadelphia prevented Boston from sweeping the four-game season series with an 89-80 win against a lineup lacking Kyrie Irving, who is battling soreness in his left shoulder.

"I felt like I would have been extra motivated if I had not been a starter," Embiid told ABC News about his vote into the All-Star game. "The coaches told me, they were like, 'You don't have anything to prove. Just play basketball.'"

Embiid, who ranks 13th in the NBA in scoring with 23.9 points per game, asked Rihanna out on a date in a series of tweets back in 2014. "Hey baby holla at me!! Dinner at giorgios at 930pm @rihanna????" Embiid wrote on July 22 2014. "This is the truth... I was trying to get with this famous girl and she said " Come back when you're a All Star" bruhh", Embiid tweeted in August 2014.

Now Embiid has fulfilled his objective, will he go back to pursuing a date with the pop singer? "She denied me back then; there's no reason to go back to her," Embiid told ESPN. "So I gotta move on to the next one. There's a lot of pretty women out there, and I'm beautiful, so I gotta move on to the next one."