Joel Embiid gives the Sixers a rare Olympic superstar — and makes Team USA even better
Embiid will join Allen Iverson as the only other Sixers player to represent the United States while an active member of the team.
Over the past 60 years, a total of 18 former, future, or current 76ers players have put on a Team USA jersey and represented America at the Olympics — from Doug Collins and Bobby Jones to Dwight Howard and Jerami Grant. And it was announced Monday that another name will be added to that group this summer: Joel Embiid, who chose to play for the United States in Paris over France, where he also holds citizenship, and his native Cameroon.
For all of the ex-Sixer Olympians on that list, Embiid will give Philly a surprisingly rare active superstar on the roster — particularly during the post-Dream Team era. Once professional players were allowed to participate in the Olympics starting in ‘92, only one other player made Team USA while currently serving as a Sixer: Allen Iverson in 2004. Embiid will be just the second when he takes the court for the U.S. this year.
Two others were very recently members of the Sixers, but were already on their way out of Philadelphia. When Charles Barkley played for the original Dream Team in 1992, he had been traded about six weeks earlier to the Phoenix Suns for Jeff Hornacek, Andrew Lang, and Tim Perry. And Andre Iguodala’s gold medal match against Spain at the 2012 Olympics came a mere two days after the Sixers shipped him to the Denver Nuggets in a four-team trade.
On top of adding to his Sixers legacy at the Olympics, Embiid is the latest in a long line of star Team USA big men who were born overseas, joining the likes of Patrick Ewing (who was born in Jamaica), Hakeem Olajuwon (Nigeria), and Carlos Boozer (Germany).
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The U.S. was already a heavy favorite before the official team was unveiled, but this year’s roster now looks significantly better on paper than the 2020 version that captured America’s fourth consecutive gold medal in Tokyo. We can see this if we add up the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) per 82 team games in the most recent NBA season (or their rookie season, for players like Anthony Davis and Christian Laettner — neither of whom played in the NBA before the Olympics) for all 12 players on each U.S. squad since the Dream Team.
Despite winning gold, the American team at Tokyo had produced a grand total of just 72.5 WAR in the 2020-21 season, prorated to an 82-game schedule — the lowest of any Olympic roster since ‘92. But the 2024 squad would rank sixth in that era, essentially pulling up even with the 2016 team.
And again, that’s using WAR from the 2023-24 season, when Embiid missed all but 39 of the Sixers’ 82 contests. If he produced at the same per-game level while playing as many games as he did (66) while winning the MVP in 2022-23, Embiid would have elevated this year’s Olympic team past 2016 as the best roster America has assembled since 2012.
In other words, Embiid is one of the biggest reasons why this U.S. team looks more dominant than it has in years — and because he’s the rare NBA Olympian representing the Sixers, he’ll give fans in Philly an even greater sense of pride than usual when they cheer on the Americans this summer.