Joel Embiid won his Olympic gold medal by sitting back and watching Steph Curry, just like everyone else

PARIS — One three-pointer, then another, then another, then maybe the most ridiculous shot in the history of Olympic basketball … off the dribble, fading away, shot clock running down, two defenders all over him, 26 feet out … Steph Curry was leaving everyone in Bercy Arena agape and in awe, including his own teammates, including the one whose presence promised to raise a ruckus Saturday night.

Joel Embiid was reduced to just another audience member for one of the best stretches of shooting that anyone has ever seen. And speaking for the rest of that audience, being a spectator for what Curry did in those final three minutes of the United States’ 98-87 gold-medal victory over France was a privilege. The man put on an incredible show: 12 of Team USA’s last 14 points, all on threes with the highest degree of difficulty and importance, 60 points and 17-for-26 from three-point range over the semifinal and championship games. Embiid was as glad and as gobsmacked as anybody.

“There’s not a lot of Stephs in this world,” he said. “I think Tyrese Maxey has that potential, but there’s not a lot of them. He’s the only one. Being part of a team, being his teammate, especially after playing against him and seeing him make all those crazy shots the last couple of years, it’s fun to be on that side.”

It was fun to win, finally. This would be Embiid’s mantra Saturday night after scoring just four points in 11 minutes and never making a shot from the field, after a gold-medal ceremony in which the French fans on hand booed him and booed him and he and his teammates waved their hands to egg them on. Two nights earlier, in the semis against Serbia, he’d risen to the occasion in the fourth quarter and finished with 19 points. On Saturday, he was along for the ride pretty much all night.

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“I was part of a team that won,” he said. “That’s how I look at it. I won a gold medal, and everybody did their job. When you’re part of a team that has a lot of superstars, you’ve got to find a way to contribute. I feel like I’ve always done that, but this was totally different, where you’re not needed as much to score. In the semifinals, I was needed to score. Then, tonight, not as much. Just finding yourself every single game and being part of a gold medal, this has been great.”

It’s hard to come away from these Games feeling all that differently about Embiid and his future with the 76ers. It’s possible the Olympics will be a springboard for him, that we’ll see a better version of him. The Serbia game suggested as much. But if he discovered some newfound maturity and discipline from his time around Curry, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant, he didn’t display much of it against France.

It was more than fair to wonder, after Embiid’s public teasing and taunting of France’s fans, whether he could remain in full control of himself Saturday. Sure enough, there was his ill-timed quasi-confrontation with Rudy Gobert — Team USA was up 14 at the time and rolling, and France rallied immediately — and in tangling with Gobert and Victor Wembanyama, Embiid at times seemed a too-big toddler crashing into the other kids in the sandbox. The incidents, such as they were, fit the pattern he had established in the tournament: He had his moments, but he didn’t deliver them consistently.

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“It’s been a lot of ups and downs,” he said. “The one thing that’s been really fun is being with the guys. The guys have been great, just being around some of the greatest players to ever play the game, a bunch of Hall of Famers. Just being around them has been amazing. That has been one of the biggest takeaways for me. …

“That’s been a great experience to learn from. When I go back to Philly, having some of my other guys, just learning how to take a step back and letting them do their thing and taking over when needed — that’s been something I’ve gotten from this experience.”

He perked up when he learned that he was the first Sixers player to win an Olympic gold medal with Team USA. But he doesn’t believe that the Olympics have changed people’s perception of him, and they haven’t caused him to reevaluate anything about himself. “It’s not going to change the way my career has gone,” he said. “I’ll have that achievement and then take it as it comes. I think I’ve accomplished a lot of things that I should be proud of.”

That, really, is the essence of Embiid: He’s a 30-year-old superstar in a sport he stumbled into when he was 16, and he already has lived a life that he couldn’t have envisioned when he first touched a basketball in Cameroon — made more money, experienced more success, found more fame. He wants to win, and he enjoys competing, but he enjoys the accoutrements of his stardom, too. Like being the object of all that derision from those thousands in the stands Saturday night. They were booing him and booing him, and he never looked happier.

“If I was not Joel Embiid, I would not be receiving that treatment,” he said. “So it feels good to be Joel Embiid, and it feels good to win.”

Yes, for once, his team won in the end. For once, he didn’t need to carry his teammates anywhere. For once, one of his teammates carried him. One three-pointer from Steph Curry, then another, then another, then the crazy clutch one no one will forget, and in the end, in the game that got him his Olympic gold medal, Joel Embiid was just a spectator bearing witness to a greater player’s greatness. In the end, all he could do was take it all in. He was just like the rest of us. He was fortunate to be there.

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