Sixers

France Coach was Glad that Joel Embiid Did Not Play for Them at Paris Olympics

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jul 15th, 2025 · 11:07 AM EDT

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Donatas Urbonas has a story at Basketnews.com titled “Why France’s head coach is happy Joel Embiid chose Team USA.” Some quotes on Embiid’s decision to play for the USA, and naturalization:

Former French national team head coach Vincent Collet admitted he was pleased that NBA superstar Joel Embiid chose to represent Team USA instead of joining France for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

“I was happy Embiid didn’t come last year,” Collet told BasketNews at the B8 Summit in Vilnius last week.

“I think we don’t need that,” he added, referring to the naturalization of players on national teams.

“I can understand why teams are doing it, but for me, it’s not fair,” Collet continued. “Most often, it’s point guards, because it’s a weakness of European countries.”

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He revealed that he was powerless to oppose France’s pursuit of naturalizing Embiid, especially with the decision coming from high-ranking officials.

“I couldn’t really do that because it was coming from even higher—like the Minister,” Collet explained. “It was something big. The Olympic Games were in France, and they thought it was, for us, insurance to be better.”

“But for me, it wasn’t that clear,” he said.

There was reporting out of France that Embiid expressed interest in playing for the Frenchies, but reneged and went back on his word. Regardless, he played for the States in Paris, won Gold, and the rest is history, as they say.

But the topic of naturalization is an interesting one. There’s no blanket stance to have because individual situations are different. In Embiid’s case, he was born in Cameroon, yes, but he’s lived half of his life in the United States. He’s an American citizen and his son was born here. He has never lived in France but has family connections and was eligible through a special clause, where they will give citizenship to those of “exceptional interest,” in this case the “exceptional interest” being the fact that he’s seven feet tall and a former MVP.

Embiid’s situation is different than that of, say, Thomas Walkup, the Texas native who went undrafted out of Stone Cold Stephen F. Austin University and has played for Olympiacos since 2021. The Greeks gave him citizenship in 2023 and the dude played with them at the Olympics, which is ridiculous. If Thomas Walkup is Greek, then I’m Eric Clapton on the guitar.

That’s one of the examples the French coach is talking about. It’s cheap to just take some American guy who wasn’t good enough for the NBA, make him a citizen, and now he’s your point guard. That’s kind of corny. It’s one thing when you have dual national Mexican-American soccer players trying to pick which country to represent, vs., say, some white dude from Texas repping Greece after two and a half seasons in Piraeus.

Similarly, it would be dumb to take the Euro superstars and make them Americans. We are already stacked. We don’t need Luka and Giannis on Team USA, do we? Wouldn’t it be better for international parity if stars represented their home countries? Food for thought, on the Embiid portion of the topic as well.