Joel Embiid: His immigrant journey to the U.S. Olympic team

PARIS — There was so much about Joel Embiid that made Brett Brown curious in their early days together with the 76ers, as one was learning about the other. Brown had guided Australia’s men’s basketball team to the quarterfinals at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, and for a man who had much more head-coaching experience internationally than he did in the NBA, he sometimes probed Embiid’s thoughts about the prospect of playing in the Olympics. Would it be for Cameroon? Embiid was born there. Would it be for France? Embiid had family there and would eventually become a French citizen, and he was so competitive and wanted so desperately to display his greatness that Brown believed Embiid might like a chance to challenge the United States with the world watching.

“Then all of a sudden, you could feel like the U.S. having a chance to be an option,” Brown said in a recent phone interview. “Previously, I did not think that. I think what’s happened over time is that he well and truly sees himself as the United States being his home.”

Fourteen years in its unfolding, Embiid’s process of adjustment and acclimation to America culminated this year with his selection to the U.S. Olympic Team. It has at times seemed gradual and at times seemed to have happened in great leaps and at times seems not to have happened at all.

He’s not the Twitter troll he once was. He still struggles to avoid injury and get himself into the highest possible physical condition for the rigors of an 82-plus-game NBA season. No one wonders and worries whether he’s consuming too many Shirley Temples. He met his wife here. His son was born here. He won an MVP award here. He still hasn’t played a postseason game beyond the second round here.

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His time in America defines him as much or more than his time before he came to America.

“Having a family here and living here half of my life,” he told reporters in Las Vegas during the national team’s preparations for Paris, “it made sense.”

Embiid’s father, Thomas, was a colonel in the Cameroonian army, and that background goes a long way to accounting for why certain aspects of Embiid’s maturation have come so easily to him and why some haven’t. A kid with that measure of discipline at home will embrace it, reject it, and sometimes do both. A kid in that kind of setting will demonstrate respect for his elders, will disregard his elders, and sometimes do both.

During Embiid’s only year in college, at Kansas, Jayhawks assistant coach Norm Roberts would have him over for dinner frequently; Roberts’ wife, Pascale, would bake brownies for Embiid. “They were close,” he said.

Roberts didn’t notice any particular difficulties for Embiid in getting used to American society. He saw Embiid as similar, for the most part, to the other African-born players who had come through KU’s program.

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“I’ve always felt African kids are very loving and very sweet,” he said. “They want to be hugged. They want you to love up on them. And Joel was that way. He liked that.”

Embiid was different in one significant regard, though.

“When he went into the league, I don’t think he felt like he should take a backseat to LeBron,” Roberts said. “I don’t think he felt like he should take a backseat to any of those guys. ‘No, I want to go at them.’ Joe is a competitive dude, a really competitive dude. He wants to win. I always felt that was the difference between him and some of the guys we had. When it became most competitive, he wants that.

“Now I think the other thing is Joel likes to be liked. He does like that. What you’re saying is, Kobe doesn’t give a s—. It’s like, ‘Eff you.’ Joel is competitive and wants to win, but he wants everybody to be happy, and he wants people to like him.”

His first two years with the Sixers, then, had to be tempered torture for him: unable to play, isolated in a new country, late for workouts, just 20 years old when he became a pro with so much growing up yet to do. He’d come by assistant coach Billy Lange’s house to play video games with Lange’s sons. He’d spend time with Eugene Burroughs, the Sixers’ shooting coach from 2014 through 2016, eschewing the party scene in which so many NBA players partake.

“He wasn’t into the glitz and glamour,” Burroughs said. “That just wasn’t his thing. That’s something that probably led to him being in the situation he’s in now. The Shirley Temple stories, that’s not even alcohol, where he’s out there drinking all night. It’s actually funny when you hear those stories. It’s soda and cranberry juice.

“He didn’t portray like he was into those things, and maybe that’s not being socialized in the U.S. Here, you watch it, and it’s glamorized. In the NBA, you experience that lifestyle. He enjoyed watching soccer and was never into that.”

Because the Sixers have fallen short in the playoffs so frequently, and because Embiid has failed so often to stay healthy, he has lost a lot of the benefit of the doubt that Sixers fans and followers were once willing to grant him. Even his decision to play in the Olympics — for the United States, for France, for Cameroon, no matter — instantly transformed into a public debate on whether it was the best course of action for him and the Sixers. The fact that Embiid wanted, and chose, to play for the U.S. — an immigrant feeling enough of a connection to America that he would want to represent the country — was hardly considered or commented on.

“This is a hard basketball city, and Joel will always be attached to the beginning of The Process, whether it’s fair or not,” said Lange, now the head coach at St. Joseph’s. “For a lot of people, that would have to be validated by him being a perfect human or a champion. When I see him now, as a father and a husband and an All-Star and an Olympian, it’s a hell of a story. There are faults, too. I’m not ignorant of them. I was around them. But overall, man, if you look at this trajectory, it was incredible.”

What is it like to be an Olympian for a country that was not your birthplace? Embiid will have his answer once he’s finished the full experience. His old coach already has his.

“You don’t feel it like you wished you did,” Brown said. “There is a piece that’s missing. It’s undeniable.”

Guilt-driven questions plagued him. Was he taking an opportunity away from an Australian-raised coach? Was he doing the right thing because he was a good enough coach to represent his adopted homeland? His wife, Anna, was from Australia, and two of his children were born there. Was that enough history? Was that a strong enough connection to the country?

“Personally,” he said, “I would not be telling the truth if I said I felt whole. You knew that you weren’t. That’s not good or bad. It’s just the truth, and it’s just for me.”

There was no surprise that Embiid didn’t play for Cameroon: His desire to win is too strong for him to play for a team whose chances of competing for a gold medal would be so slim. He had flirted with the idea of playing for France and even spoke to Emmanuel Macron, the nation’s president, about the possibility, telling The New York Times that his disdain for the political/colonialist relationship between France and Cameroon was the primary reason he had elected to play for the U.S.

“There’s a lot of pushback of basically kicking out the French because there have been so many years of oppression,” he told The Times. “That was my mindset because I knew it would be hard. With my family being in Cameroon, I don’t want to put them through any of that stuff.”

The reaction here to his decision has been uncharitable to say the least. People heckled and jeered him earlier this week as he disembarked a train, shouting that he should “give back his passport.” Before his arrival in France, he had laughed off the likelihood of such abuse: “I don’t think it can get worse than playing in New York in the playoffs. I’ve seen it all.”

It was cocky. It was knowing. You have to admit: Joel Embiid’s was a thoroughly American response.