France vs. Joel Embiid was not the storyline I had pegged in April during the NBA playoffs, but it’s been on fire. Get a load of the Human Teabag Fred Weis’ comments via Eurohoops.net:

Frederic Weis, Olympic silver medalist in 2000 and the victim of the notorious “dunk of death” by Vince Carter, didn’t hold back, talking about Embiid on his radio show at the French station RMC.

As Weis said: “I consider this boy a great player as much as he is a dirty guy. I hate him for the things that he did. I think he doesn’t have any respect for France and also for all the people who are asking for a French passport and don’t get it. And under the pretext that he is a great athlete, he got it. I find it scandalous, I find it embarrassing. I don’t care about his excuses, cause they are his words, and his words mean nothing”.

I mean one of the most ironic parts of this whole story without diving too far into geo-political history, is the fact that France has historically disadvantaged Cameroonians since they invaded the country. So to say THIS is scandalous and embarrassing is rich.

On the other hand I don’t think you should be allowed to have any opinions on basketball if this happened to you:

When you can’t have an article written about you without referencing that time Vince Carter teabagged you on an international stage you shouldn’t be allowed to have a basketball opinion. How this guy shows his face in public knowing Vince Carter’s nuts used his head to scratch his balls is beyond me. But something tells me Weis doesn’t really think things through to begin with because he thinks Embiid should be banned from the country and stripped of his citizenship:

So how Weis would like to see the whole situation resolved? He joked but his words were harsh: “I would take away from him the French nationality and I would ban him from entering France. You will not play in the Olympics. You will come to the airport with Team USA and we will say: You don’t have the right to enter the territory, go to your home. You are Cameroonian, you are American, you are not French, go away”. 

Honestly I’d welcome this. I don’t want Embiid anywhere near Team USA with the condition his knee is in. Ban him from France today. Who gives a shit about France anyway? It’s a poop river and a big metal tower:

We already have the Schuylkill and Comcast in Philly. You have France at home. The escargot at Parc is probably better than any spot in France regardless.

And lets not act like Olympic athletes haven’t been swapping passports from country to country for years. Becky Hammond is Russian after she was left off the Team USA roster. The best freestyle skier in the world, Eileen Gu, lives in the United States but competed for China at the 2021 Winter Olympics. Timberwolves player Kyle Anderson became a Chinese citizen and played for the team before the 2023 World Cup because his grandmother was born in Jamaica to a Chinese father. Diplomats will bend the rules any way they want when it comes to athletics. Embiid didn’t become a U.S. citizen until after he became a citizen of France. The guy probably wanted a backup plan in case his U.S citizenship wasn’t approved. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. But seriously, ban him from France please.