Joel Embiid is the most important NBA star attempting to ship Workforce USA males’s basketball its fifth-straight gold medal on the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Actually.
Listed as 7-feet and 280 kilos, Embiid’s presence alongside LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and the remainder of Workforce USA makes an already imposing roster appear to be a humiliation of riches.
REQUIRED READING:Observe USA TODAY’s full protection of the 2024 Paris Olympics
The Philadelphia 76ers heart averaged an NBA-best 34.7 factors per sport in the course of the 2023-24 season, only one 12 months faraway from being named the league’s most useful participant. He’ll crew with Los Angeles Lakers star Anthony Davis and Bam Adebayo of the Miami Warmth to kind a trio of massive males not like any on the planet.
However this will probably be Embiid’s first time collaborating in a world competitors, and his path to those Olympics has been completely different from the remainder of his teammates. Embiid had choices, and his option to play for Workforce USA raised eyebrows stateside and overseas.
Right here’s what it is advisable to find out about Embiid’s choice to characterize america, and the way he wound up donning the purple, white and blue in Paris:
The place is Joel Embiid from?
Embiid was born in Yaounde, Cameroon and largely performed soccer and volleyball rising up there. He didn’t begin enjoying basketball till he was 15 years outdated. He moved to america a 12 months later after NBA participant and fellow Cameroon native Luc Mbah A Moute seen him at a basketball camp in Africa.
Embiid has performed within the states ever since then, rising as a five-star recruit at The Rock College in Gainesville, Florida, per his 247Sports Composite profile. He then performed one season at Kansas. Embiid was chosen by the 76ers with the No. 3 general decide within the 2014 NBA draft and has performed in Philadelphia throughout his complete skilled profession.
What nationality is Joel Embiid?
Born in Cameroon, Embiid additionally had the chance to play for France or his native nation within the Olympics. He gained citizenship to France in Could 2022 by a clause there that permits naturalization to a foreigner whose naturalization is “of remarkable curiosity.” Embiid then revealed in September 2022 that he had additionally change into a United States citizen, and cited his son because the motivation.
How is Joel Embiid enjoying for Workforce USA?
A 12 months later, when Embiid introduced he had dedicated to play for Workforce USA in Paris, his household’s connection to america was the figuring out issue.
“It was not simple,” Embiid wrote in a put up on X (previously Twitter) explaining his choice in October 2023. “I’m blessed to name Cameroon, France, and the USA dwelling. “After speaking to my household, I knew it needed to be Workforce USA. I wish to play with my brothers within the league. I wish to play for my followers as a result of they’ve been unimaginable for the reason that day I got here right here. However most of all, I wish to honor my son who was born within the US. I would like my boy to know I performed my first Olympics for him.”
MORE:Workforce USA males’s and ladies’s basketball odds at 2024 Paris Olympics
Was Embiid’s choice to hitch Workforce USA controversial?
It actually has been in France.
When Embiid was granted French citizenship, hypothesis instantly adopted that he was planning to characterize France two years later when it hosted the Olympics. There was the potential to crew with Victor Wembanyama and Rudy Gobert.
Former NBA participant Boris Diaw, who at present serves as the overall supervisor of the French nationwide crew in males’s basketball, insisted to The Athletic that Embiid approached a number of occasions in the course of the 2021-22 NBA season about his curiosity in enjoying for France.
When France beat america 83-76 in the course of the 2020 Olympics, snapping Workforce USA’s 25-game profitable streak in Olympic competitors, Embiid even tweeted, “Allez les Bleus” in celebration.
“Joel got here to us and stated that he wished to play worldwide basketball, he stated he wished to win, and he stated he wished to play for France and he wished to win with France,” Diaw instructed The Athletic. “So we listened to him.”
This led French officers to bypass the standard routes to realize citizenship. Embiid didn’t have direct French heritage, nor had he lived in France for not less than two years. However he and his son have been granted a French passport due to what France may accomplish on the Olympics with him.
Embiid, nevertheless, by no means did play for France, and selecting to play for america was not met kindly by the French.
“Workforce USA, with him, who can beat you? Come on, no person,” French Basketball Federation president Jean-Pierre Siutat instructed The Athletic. “That is a simple means for him to get an Olympic medal.”
Frederic Weis — the previous French nationwide participant who infamously bought dunked on by Vince Carter in the course of the 2000 Olympics — took it much more personally.
NBA FREE AGENCY:Joel Embiid on the Philadelphia 76ers offseason strikes, together with Paul George signing
“I hate him for the issues that he did. I believe he would not have any respect for France and in addition for all of the people who find themselves asking for a French passport and do not get it. And underneath the pretext that he’s an amazing athlete, he bought it,” Weis stated in April, by way of Eurohoops.web. “I discover it scandalous, I discover it embarrassing. I do not care about his excuses, as a result of they’re his phrases, and his phrases imply nothing.
“I’d take away from him the French nationality and I’d ban him from coming into France,” Weis added. “You’ll not play within the Olympics. You’ll come to the airport with Workforce USA and we’ll say, ‘You do not have the proper to enter the territory, go to your own home. You might be Cameroonian, you might be American, you aren’t French, go away.'”
In the course of the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony, Workforce USA teammate Tyrese Haliburton jokingly sounded an identical chorus in a video posted on his Instagram account.
“Give your passport again,” Haliburton stated.
“I am American, man,” Embiid responded, waving a miniature American flag from the boat carrying america delegation of athletes alongside the Seine River in the course of the parade of countries.
Embiid stated in July at Workforce USA coaching camp he isn’t anxious a couple of impolite reception when he arrives in Paris.
“I do not suppose it needs to be something, but when it is greater than that, I embrace it,” Embiid instructed The Athletic. “I do not suppose you will get worse than enjoying in New York within the playoffs.”
Who else born exterior america has performed for Workforce USA?
Hakeem Olajuwon (born in Nigeria) and Patrick Ewing (born in Jamaica) are probably the most well-known earlier examples of naturalized residents to characterize america in males’s basketball on the Olympics.
Joel Embiid profession highlights
Embiid didn’t play his first two years within the league on account of a lingering foot damage. However within the eight seasons since then, he has amassed fairly the resume. Listed below are a few of his notable accomplishments:
- 2022-23 NBA MVP
- 7-time NBA All-Star
- 5-time all-NBA choice (first crew in 2023, second crew in 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022)
- 2-time NBA scoring champion (2021-22 and 2022-23)