Why is Joel Embiid playing for Team USA basketball at 2024 Paris Olympics?

Joel Embiid is the biggest NBA star trying to deliver Team USA men’s basketball its fifth-straight gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Literally. 

Listed as 7-feet and 280 pounds, Embiid’s presence alongside LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and the rest of Team USA makes an already imposing roster seem like an embarrassment of riches.

REQUIRED READING:Follow USA TODAY’s full coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics

The Philadelphia 76ers center averaged an NBA-best 34.7 points per game during the 2023-24 season, just one year removed from being named the league’s most valuable player. He’ll team with Los Angeles Lakers star Anthony Davis and Bam Adebayo of the Miami Heat to form a trio of big men unlike any in the world.

But this will be Embiid’s first time participating in an international competition, and his path to these Olympics has been different from the rest of his teammates. Embiid had options, and his choice to play for Team USA raised eyebrows stateside and abroad.

Here’s what you need to know about Embiid’s decision to represent the United States, and how he wound up donning the red, white and blue in Paris:

Where is Joel Embiid from?

Embiid was born in Yaounde, Cameroon and mostly played soccer and volleyball growing up there. He didn’t start playing basketball until he was 15 years old. He moved to the United States a year later after NBA player and fellow Cameroon native Luc Mbah A Moute noticed him at a basketball camp in Africa.

Embiid has played in the states ever since then, emerging as a five-star recruit at The Rock School in Gainesville, Florida, per his 247Sports Composite profile. He then played one season at Kansas. Embiid was chosen by the 76ers with the No. 3 overall pick in the 2014 NBA draft and has played in Philadelphia during his entire professional career.

What nationality is Joel Embiid?

Born in Cameroon, Embiid also had the opportunity to play for France or his native country in the Olympics. He gained citizenship to France in May 2022 through a clause there that allows naturalization to a foreigner whose naturalization is “of exceptional interest.” Embiid then revealed in September 2022 that he had also become a United States citizen, and cited his son as the motivation.

How is Joel Embiid playing for Team USA?

A year later, when Embiid announced he had committed to play for Team USA in Paris, his family’s connection to the United States was the determining factor.

“It was not easy,” Embiid wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) explaining his decision in October 2023. “I am blessed to call Cameroon, France, and the USA home. “After talking to my family, I knew it had to be Team USA. I want to play with my brothers in the league. I want to play for my fans because they’ve been incredible since the day I came here. But most of all, I want to honor my son who was born in the US. I want my boy to know I played my first Olympics for him.”

MORE:Team USA men’s and women’s basketball odds at 2024 Paris Olympics

Was Embiid’s decision to join Team USA controversial?

It certainly has been in France.

When Embiid was granted French citizenship, speculation immediately followed that he was planning to represent France two years later when it hosted the Olympics. There was the potential to team with Victor Wembanyama and Rudy Gobert.

Former NBA player Boris Diaw, who currently serves as the general manager of the French national team in men’s basketball, insisted to The Athletic that Embiid approached multiple times during the 2021-22 NBA season about his interest in playing for France.

When France beat the United States 83-76 during the 2020 Olympics, snapping Team USA’s 25-game winning streak in Olympic competition, Embiid even tweeted, “Allez les Bleus” in celebration.

“Joel came to us and said that he wanted to play international basketball, he said he wanted to win, and he said he wanted to play for France and he wanted to win with France,” Diaw told The Athletic. “So we listened to him.”

This led French officials to bypass the typical routes to gain citizenship. Embiid did not have direct French heritage, nor had he lived in France for at least two years. But he and his son were granted a French passport because of what France could accomplish at the Olympics with him.

Embiid, however, never did play for France, and choosing to play for the United States was not met kindly by the French. 

“Team USA, with him, who can beat you? Come on, nobody,” French Basketball Federation president Jean-Pierre Siutat told The Athletic. “This is an easy way for him to get an Olympic medal.”

Frederic Weis — the former French national player who infamously got dunked on by Vince Carter during the 2000 Olympics — took it even more personally.

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“I hate him for the things that he did. I think he doesn’t have any respect for France and also for all the people who are asking for a French passport and don’t get it. And under the pretext that he is a great athlete, he got it,” Weis said in April, via Eurohoops.net. “I find it scandalous, I find it embarrassing. I don’t care about his excuses, because they are his words, and his words mean nothing.

“I would take away from him the French nationality and I would ban him from entering France,” Weis added. “You will not play in the Olympics. You will come to the airport with Team USA and we will say, ‘You don’t have the right to enter the territory, go to your home. You are Cameroonian, you are American, you are not French, go away.'”

During the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony, Team USA teammate Tyrese Haliburton jokingly sounded a similar refrain in a video posted on his Instagram account.

“Give your passport back,” Haliburton said.

“I’m American, man,” Embiid responded, waving a miniature American flag from the boat carrying the United States delegation of athletes along the Seine River during the parade of nations.

Embiid said in July at Team USA training camp he isn’t worried about a rude reception when he arrives in Paris.

“I don’t think it should be anything, but if it’s more than that, I embrace it,” Embiid told The Athletic. “I don’t think you can get worse than playing in New York in the playoffs.”

Who else born outside the United States has played for Team USA?

Hakeem Olajuwon (born in Nigeria) and Patrick Ewing (born in Jamaica) are the most famous previous examples of naturalized citizens to represent the United States in men’s basketball at the Olympics.

Joel Embiid career highlights

Embiid didn’t play his first two years in the league as a result of a lingering foot injury. But in the eight seasons since then, he has amassed quite the resume. Here are some of his notable accomplishments:

• 2022-23 NBA MVP
• 7-time NBA All-Star
• 5-time all-NBA selection (first team in 2023, second team in 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022)
• 2-time NBA scoring champion (2021-22 and 2022-23)