Dan Patrick: “How entertaining is the Joel Embiid vs. France story to you?”
Joe Vardon: “The French federation on the record – and they had receipts – they said they helped him get a French passport because he told them to... Because he wanted to play for them. They were explicit about this. The basketball federation, the government; President Macron called Embiid and tried to recruit him after the passport had been granted. The fans know all this stuff.
He seemed to be taken back by the boos, then his teammates got his back and started waiving the boos on with them, and then he started to shift his commentary about what was going on. At one point he said he doesn’t care if they boo, then he said ‘well, I’m an American, and I was always going to play for Team USA’, and then he hinted strongly that the USA players wanted him and the French players didn’t. And now he says ‘Well, I love France, but I was always going to play for Cameroon if they qualified for the Olympics, and since they didn’t I picked the US.’
The recruitment goes back years by Boris Diaw and the French federation president. They were taking meetings with Joel in 2021 to gage his interest, and the reason why is because years before that he had stated in several French publications that he had interest in doing this. So they recruited him and recruited him, and according to them, had gotten to the point where he said ‘OK, I am going to play’, and they said ‘OK, you need to be a French citizen to be on the team’, and according to them he said ‘OK, get me a passport!’
Joel, though a spokesman has denied this. He’s denied the quid pro quo. It’s hard to believe that this isn’t at least very close to true. Especially because the French federation guys are explicit in it like ‘this is not done in France’. They are always playing guys who just are from this country, period, and Joel had never lived there. They were making an exception for a truly great player who at the time had wanted to do it. So, I think that’s all real."
Listen to Joe Vardon, NBA writer for The Athletic, document the process of the French basketball federation thinking they had landed Philadelphia 76ers superstar Joel Embiid to play for their national team in these 2024 Paris Olympics, only for the former MVP to get cold feet right before the games.
Check out the segment above as Vardon documents how even the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, got involved to recruit Embiid to one of Team USA’s biggest rivals, and how Embiid eventually went back on his promise for playing for France alongside NBA All-Stars the likes of Rudy Gobert and Victor Wembanyama.
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