It’s been interesting reading about Joel Embiid after Team USA’s Olympic triumph in Paris. On one end of the spectrum, you have fanboys who think Joel can do no wrong, and on the other end there exists plenty of criticism for traditional media, in this case the Inquirer’s Mike Sielski:

The Embiid spectrum is a wide one, and always has been. This isn’t the first or last time a superstar Philadelphia athlete will be greeted with a vast array of opinions about his or her play, their successes and failures.

Going through the tournament, it was a mixed Joel bag when you break out the games individually:

  • Serbia: poor performance, ineffective on the floor and limited to 11 minutes
  • South Sudan: DNP
  • Puerto Rico: a good performance – 15 points/3 rebounds/3 assists/2 blocks in 23 minutes, shot 6-14 from the floor.
  • Brazil: efficient and effective – 14 points/7 rebounds in 12 minutes, 5-6 from the floor and 3-3 from three
  • Serbia semifinal: best game of the tournament by far – 19 points on 8-11 shooting, 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and key second half minutes against Nikola Jokic that helped spark a wild U.S. comeback
  • France: a disappointing opening shift, better in the 3rd quarter, but only played 11 minutes and did not hit a field goal in the final

It’s funny because the whole “France vs. Embiid” build up resulted in pretty much nothing. Joel played sparingly, and outside of a couple of goofy moments with Rudy Gobert and Victor Wembanyama, he really was not part of the Gold medal game story line. He scored 4 points, all at the foul line, and had some bright spots in the third, but was largely a bystander watching from the bench.

But evaluation has to be framed within the context of 12 superstars on one team. Not everyone was going to be called upon or even able to contribute in every game. Jayson Tatum, who just scored 22 points per game in the finals and won a damn ring, caught a couple of DNPs, then got minutes against France. Steph Curry was sluggish to start, then self-immolated as the tournament progressed. Tyrese Haliburton played sparingly. Did he gravy train his way to a gold medal?


If you’re looking at the run in totality, Joel played a part like everyone else, and his part just happened to come in the middle portion, highlighted by a semifinal in which he scored 19 against arguably the second-best team in Paris. People can’t say he rode coattails to Olympic gold because the consensus seems to be that the U.S. doesn’t complete that Serbia comeback without him.

I wrote this Saturday night and believe it to still be true 48 hours later:

“For Sixers fans, it wasn’t necessarily about seeing Joel win gold. It was about him getting a taste of basketball’s highest level and hopefully learning from that and bringing it home, for application this NBA season. Whether or not that has happened remains to be seen. “

Wasn’t this the thing that Sixers fans wanted more than anything else? The gold medal is nice. They are happy for Joel Embiid. It’s satisfying to see him win something after all he’s been through with the injuries and revolving door of co-stars. But the bigger hope was that Joel could immerse himself in the highest level of basketball by surrounding himself with proven winners. That was supposed to be infectious, an experience he could learn from, bring back to Wells Fargo Center, and then use to get over the NBA 2nd round hump. You heard it from everyone, some version of the admittedly-nebulous and impossible-to-prove “Joel will learn how to win at the Olympics” opinion. Being around LeBron and Steph, receiving coaching from Steve Kerr, Erik Spoelstra, Tyronn Lue, and Mark Few? If that doesn’t impact you positively, then nothing will. Now the next order of business is Joel coming back healthy and focused on this Sixers campaign, with an understanding of what it takes to finish the job and play the best basketball in the highest of high-leverage situations.