As the athletes across the world are all gathering in France for the Olympics, some received a not-so-warm welcome from fans, in particular Philadelphia 76ers player Joel Embiid was heckled upon his arrival. That is to say, being born in Cameroon, and having French citizenship, Embiid chose to represent the United States of America, where he lived since he was 16 years old, at the 2024 Paris Games.
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As soon as Joel Embiid came out of the train station in Paris, the French welcomed him with “Give back your passport, Joel… you should have played for France!” and “You’re not American, bro!”
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— Kicks (@kicks) July 24, 2024
As Embiid was getting on the bus, some fans were speaking French to the 7-footer, and he seemingly heard and understood the antagonizing comments, glancing over in their direction after hearing them say (in translation), "Give back your passport Joel... You should have played for France."
Then they continued, "You're not American, bro!"
In regards to Embiid's decision to join the 592-member U.S. delegation for the Olympics, he gave a statement.
"Obviously, I got my home country, Cameroon, which I love, and the U.S., where I've been for 14 years now, and then France, where I have a lot of family," Embiid said. "I kind of felt rushed in that decision. I wanted to take as much time as possible, and it didn't help that France had put an ultimatum on when the decision had to be made."
The Cameroon native went on to elaborate on the current situation in his home country in relation to his French citizenship.
"There's a lot of things going on over there," he said. "There's a lot of pushback as far as basically kicking out the French because it's been so many years of oppression. So that was my mindset. I still got my family living in Cameroon, and I don't want to put them through any of that stuff. I want them to be safe, and the relationship between France and Cameroon or Africa in general is just not good."
All in all, Embiid will now join forces alongside LeBron James and Stephen Curry in an attempt to help the Team USA men's national basketball team win gold for the fifth time in a row at the Olympics.
To note, the first game will be played against the Serbian team (July 28 at 11:15 am ET), as the 2023 NBA MVP, Embiid, will match up against the 2024 (2021, 2022) MVP, Nikola Jokic.
