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Brian Windhorst, ESPN Senior Writer
PARIS — The crowds for France’s upset victories over Canada and Germany this week at Bercy Arena on the banks of the Seine in the French capital have been electric this week. And Saturday’s gold medal game against Team USA is expected to bring a new level of energy because of both the opponent and its villain.
Joel Embiid has played the role perfectly, and while he has mostly been willing to try to revel in the situation and even go back at fans, he said Friday he doesn’t get why there’s such venom aimed his way but that it won’t change his attitude.
“Frankly, I don’t understand why I’ve gotten a lot of criticism from the crowd,” Embiid said. “They’re going to boo me. I’m going to go back at them and tell them to ‘suck it.’ And so it’s going to be fun.”
The French are angry with Embiid because he asked for and received French citizenship in 2022, and the assumption clearly was that it was so he could play in these Games for France. Whatever words were spoken between French basketball and government officials including French president Emmanuel Macron, Embiid never felt he’d made a promise.
Embiid, who has discussed this many times this summer but has not seen any thawing with the French fans, has said when he talked to Macron he discussed how the relationship between France and African nations, including Cameroon, is “not good.”
He is perturbed at this point, he said, because he thinks it should be easy to understand why he chose the U.S., where he has lived since he was 16 and where he got citizenship in 2023. And many of Embiid’s current USA Basketball teammates recruited him, making it known they wanted him to play a key role.
“Having lived half of my life in the U.S. and the other half in my country, Cameroon, it just looked like it was, you could go two ways,” Embiid said. “I said, from the beginning, and everybody knew that if Cameroon would’ve qualified, that would’ve never been a choice. And then having the family [in America] and having built a lot of things and having accomplished a lot of things in the U.S. and then knowing the group of guys deeply, it just made it 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 averaging 16 points on 61% shooting. And he’s been encouraging the booing the entire way, adding his (banned by the NBA) favorite move taken from the WWE, the “crotch chop,” when the Games moved to Paris this week.
“I think a lot of people wanted to [make it an issue] because of storyline and all that stuff … but to me it’s whatever it takes to win to gold. So that’s what I’m focused on. It’s all about Team USA against France.”