How Embiid got to the NBA

Joel Embiid didn’t play a game of basketball until he was 15, said Clay Skipper in GQ, and now he’s one of the NBA’s brightest stars. Growing up in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, Embiid dreamed of becoming an astronaut. “I don’t even know if there’s a Cameroonian astronaut.” His parents were ultrastrict about school and didn’t want him wasting time playing sports. “When my mom found out” he’d gone off to play, “it was bad for me.” He didn’t pick up basketball until 15, but despite being able to do little more than dunk, he was offered a scholarship to a powerhouse prep school in Florida. He watched YouTube videos of random white guys shooting three-pointers, then spent hours mimicking their picturesque form. With unusual touch for a man standing 7-foot-2, Embiid dominated during one year at the University of Kansas and was drafted third overall by the Philadelphia 76ers. Injuries kept him sidelined his first two seasons. He remembers “people making fun of me. Telling me that I was a bust. That I was done. That I was never going to play in the NBA.” But he’s emerged as an MVP candidate on an up-and-coming team and is one of the league’s most popular players, thanks to his playing antics and trash-talking on the court and on social media. “I love when people talk trash. I enjoy when people tell me, ‘You suck, you can’t dribble, you can’t shoot.’” There’s only one response to that jeering: “Gotta go to the gym.”