Embiid Seeks To Overcome French Jeers In Quest For Olympic Gold With Team USA

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Joel Embiid aims to quiet a hostile French crowd when Team USA faces France in the men's basketball gold medal match at the Paris Olympics on Saturday. Born in Cameroon, Embiid gained US citizenship in 2022 and chose to play for Team USA after his home country failed to qualify.

Embiid's decision followed his pursuit of French citizenship, with reports suggesting that President Emmanuel Macron had personally urged him to represent France. Despite this, Embiid has faced jeers from French fans throughout the tournament. The USA team has won all five of their games so far, securing their place in the final with a comeback victory over Serbia on Thursday.

On the eve of the gold medal match, Embiid addressed the criticism he has received from the French crowd. "Frankly, I don't understand why I've gotten a lot of criticism from the crowd. They're going to boo me. I'm going to go back at them and tell them to 'suck it.' It's going to be fun," he said.

Reflecting on his choice to join LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and others in representing the USA, Embiid mentioned he would have played for Cameroon if they had qualified. "Having lived half of my life in the US and the other half in my country, Cameroon, it just looked like it was, 'you could go two ways'," Embiid explained.

"I said from the beginning that if Cameroon would've qualified, that would never have been a choice," Embiid continued. "Then having family [in the US] and having built a lot of things and having accomplished a lot of things, knowing the group of guys deeply, it just made it easy."

Embiid believes many people wanted to create an issue out of his decision due to its storyline but insists his focus is solely on winning gold for Team USA. "To me it's whatever it takes to win gold. So that's what I'm focused on," he stated.

The highly anticipated match between Team USA and France will take place on Saturday at 3:30 pm ET and will be broadcasted on NBC and Peacock.

As Team USA prepares for this crucial game against France, all eyes will be on Joel Embiid and how he handles both the pressure and the crowd's reaction.