Joel Embiid should play in the Paris Olympics. It would be the best thing for him and the Sixers.

From Joel Embiid’s first step down from a dais inside the Wells Fargo Center last week, the clock started ticking on the decision that could define his offseason and maybe his future in basketball.

He has little more than two months to weigh whether he will follow through on his desire and opportunity to play for the U.S. men’s team at the Summer Olympics in Paris, and soon enough, the question will turn into a referendum on Embiid’s character and priorities, if it hasn’t already. Isn’t his first obligation to the team that is paying him $213 million? Shouldn’t winning an NBA championship — hell, shouldn’t getting out of the second round — matter more to him? And does he want to get hurt again?

For what it’s worth, once he’d finished his press conference following the 76ers’ Game 6 loss to the Knicks, Embiid was asked if he would play in the Olympics.

“I don’t know,” he said.

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Twelve games after tearing the meniscus in his left knee, seven games with half his face frozen from Bell’s palsy — maybe he just needed some time and healing and distance from another disappointing ending to reaffirm his commitment to his country. No one in the NBA cares more about his legacy, about how his peers view him now and how the sport’s historians will view him years from now, than Embiid does. He wants to be there for the Games. He wants to excel on the world’s stage among the world’s best players.

Good. If he can play, if he’s healthy enough to play, he should.

As calls go, this one isn’t that hard. The Sixers can’t stand in the way of Embiid’s path to Paris even if they wanted to, and the benefits of his spending so much time with LeBron James, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, and the rest of the team exceed the risks that he’ll suffer another injury.

“It’s important to support the dreams of your best player,” Morey told reporters Monday. “First of all, it’s not even in our hands. Second off, we would always support Joel in something that important to him. I think it’s really cool that he thinks that’s one of the dreams he’s had since he became a citizen.”

Yes, it is cool, but these Games are about more than Embiid’s inspiring immigrant’s story. The chance to take part in the Olympics is an honor, but it’s not a reward unto itself. Embiid won’t get a gold medal just for his presence on the U.S. team. The point isn’t to participate. The point is to put together a team that can beat Spain and Germany and the rest of the world, prepare that team for the rigors and rule changes of international basketball, then win.

This isn’t three weeks of pickup ball or nighttime strolls along the Seine. This is the fiercest competition among the finest athletes, with global bragging rights at stake, and it’s the richest and most fertile ground for growth for Embiid, even now that he’s 30.

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It always feels like there’s something within him still untapped, a gear that he hasn’t gotten to yet. Better conditioning, more maturity, a sloppiness and passiveness that too often creep into his game: These are still issues for him, however slight, and he can learn to correct or mitigate them just by observing and interacting with and listening to the other members of Team USA, by being held to the highest of standards.

Go back to 2008, to Mike Krzyzewski telling Kobe Bryant — at James’ urging — to stop taking “bulls--- shots” and Bryant heeding the command. Go back to Bryant plowing over his Lakers teammate Pau Gasol early in a preliminary-round game against Spain, a tone-setting, message-sending ambush against one of his best friends to show that he didn’t care about anything but flying home from Beijing with a gold medal in his carry-on.

Go back further. In researching and writing Dream Team, the definitive chronicle of the U.S.’s influence and dominance at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, Jack McCallum found a common thread: Every player, from Michael Jordan to Magic Johnson, from Charles Barkley to Scottie Pippen, extracted something of value from one or more of his teammates. Everyone’s knowledge or overall game improved for having been around everyone else.

“I was sort of astonished to hear that,” McCallum said in a recent interview that was broadcast on WIP-FM (94.1). “ ’Oh, I really found out how Karl Malone worked out. … Oh, I really found out about Larry Bird’s shooting drills. … Oh, I watched Jordan and Pippen play defense, and I took that back to my team.’

“So even though I see a broken-down Joel — in the fourth quarter, if ever the verb ‘trudge’ would fit anybody, Joel just trudges up the court — even given all of that, I would say it is absolutely true it’s good to [be] around these guys who have won something. It’s just getting a different kind of culture. As much as Daryl Morey and Nick Nurse are probably going, ‘No,’ I would say play, because I think there’s a real positive aspect that he can get out of that.”

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That’s the difference: the unfamiliar circumstances for Embiid if he plays.

These Olympics will be like nothing he has experienced with the Sixers. He won’t be the star. He won’t be the centerpiece. As great as he already is, as great as he believes himself to be, he’ll be a piker compared with the teammates making demands of him every day, expecting him to understand the small but essential measures — the extra work, the intelligence, the unselfishness — that separate the genuine all-timers from those who only think they are.

James has four championships and is one of the five best players of all time. Curry has four championships and is the best shooter the planet has ever seen. Durant has two titles and a Most Valuable Player award. Kawhi Leonard has twice been the MVP of the NBA Finals, beating Embiid and the Sixers en route to one of those rings. Anthony Davis and Jrue Holiday have accomplished more from a team perspective than Embiid has.

By the time the U.S. men start their schedule of preliminary games in early July, Anthony Edwards will likely have lifted the Minnesota Timberwolves to a level that Embiid has never reached with the Sixers: the conference finals. Never mind the opponents lined up against Team USA. France has Victor Wembanyama and Rudy Gobert. Serbia has Nikola Jokic. Slovenia has Luka Doncic. Lithuania is deep and beat the U.S. at last summer’s World Cup.

That environment should conjure a better version of Embiid. It should bring the best out of him. If it does, the Sixers will reap the gains. If it doesn’t, the revelation will be worse for them, and him, than another fractured bone or torn ligament. That’s the promise of Paris for Joel Embiid, the question that can finally be answered: What’s he really made of? Only one way to find out.