Joel Embiid could find yourself changing into an Olympic mercenary.
The Philadelphia 76ers star Embiid, who’s at the moment taking part in with Staff USA on the Paris Olympics, made an attention-grabbing revelation to reporters this week. Embiid hinted at the potential of taking part in for his native Cameroon on the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
“It’s been a great expertise,” he mentioned of the Olympics, per Ron Kroichick of the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s been a grind, being away from residence and household for a number of weeks. However the group of fellows we have now made it straightforward. Paris is a superb metropolis and the following one is LA. It won’t be with Staff USA, it is perhaps with Cameroon.”
Embiid, who will likely be 34 by the point of the 2028 Olympics, is a local of Cameroon. However Cameroon didn’t qualify for this 12 months’s Olympics, which means that Embiid solely had two choices — the USA and France. Regardless of flirting with the concept of suiting up for France and even buying a French citizenship at one level, Embiid in the end selected the U.S. for 2024, citing multiple reasons at the time. In consequence, Embiid has been booed closely by the house crowd all through the Paris Video games and has often returned fire too.
The previous NBA MVP Embiid would require a waiver from each USA Basketball and FIBA to be able to make the change to Cameroon for 2024. However the African nation is an up-and-comer on the worldwide basketball scene and already options a number of NBA gamers equivalent to Pascal Siakam, Christian Koloko and Yves Missi. If Embiid does certainly select to affix his native nation for the 2028 Olympics, he can in all probability sit up for far much less backlash from the host L.A. crowd than he has already gotten in Paris.
