Slandered by French, Joel Embiid expects entertaining Olympic basketball final

PARIS — The crowd for France’s surprise wins over Canada and Germany this week at the Bercy Arena on the banks of the Seine in the French capital was electric. And Saturday’s gold medal match against Team USA is expected to bring a new level of energy from both the opponent and its villain.

Joel Embiid has played his role perfectly and while he is generally willing to revel in the situation and even seek revenge on fans, he said Friday that he doesn’t understand why there is so much venom directed at him, but that it won’t change his attitude.

“Honestly, I don’t know why I got so much criticism from the crowd,” Embiid said. “They’re going to boo me. I’m going to go back to them and tell them to ‘forgive me.’ And so it’s going to be fun.”

The French are angry at Embiid because he applied for and was granted French citizenship in 2022, and the assumption was clearly that this was so he could represent France in these Games. No matter what was said between French basketball players and government officials, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Embiid never felt like he made a promise.

Embiid, who has spoken about this several times this summer but has yet to see a thaw among French fans, said that in his conversation with Macron he said that the relationship between France and African countries, including Cameroon, is “not good.”

He’s troubled at this point, he said, because he thinks it should be easy to understand why he chose the United States, where he has lived since he was 16 and will become a citizen in 2023. And many of Embiid’s current teammates on the U.S. national basketball team have recruited him and made it clear they wanted him to play a key role.

“I’ve lived half my life in the U.S. and the other half in my country, Cameroon, so it seemed like you could go either way,” Embiid said. “I said from the beginning, and everyone knew, if Cameroon qualified, it would never have been a choice. And then once I had the family (in America) and built a lot of things and accomplished a lot of things in the U.S. and knew the group of guys well, it just became easy.”

Embiid is having an impactful Olympics — especially in Thursday’s semifinals, where he went head-to-head with Serbian star Nikola Jokic. Embiid scored 19 points with four rebounds and a block.

Over the past three games, he’s averaged 16 points on 61 percent shooting. And he’s encouraged the boos all the way, adding his favorite (NBA-banned) WWE move, the “crotch chop,” when the Games moved to Paris this week.

“I think a lot of people (wanted to make an issue of it) because of the storyline and all that stuff … but for me, it’s all it takes to win gold. So that’s what I’m focused on. It’s all about Team USA versus France.”