Joel Embiid is the Future of Basketball

Joel Embiid is one of the 10 athletes who've got next: doing damage already, but biding their time to fill the shoes of the 50 Greatest Living Athletes. To see the full list of the young sports phenomenons we're calling The Anointed Ones, click here.

Three weeks before the 2017 NBA season starts, Joel Embiid, potential savior of the Philadelphia 76ers’, trustee of The Process, and noted lover of Shirley Temples, has traded his favorite sugary drink for a healthier snack. He holds an apple in his hand—one of three he brings to this interview—which looks more like an egg or a walnut. If he tweeted out a picture of him palming this Red Delicious—“An apple a day #trusttheprocess”—it’d probably go viral, since just about everything Joel Embiid does goes viral: the stone cold stoicism when he got drafted third overall in the 2014 NBA Draft, thanks to a tape delay; his courting of Rihanna—a saga that belongs in whatever museum we build for Best Tweets; more recently, poking fun at Kevin Durant’s burner accounts, running through the streets of Philadelphia, Rocky-style, and starting a very fun beef with Hassan Whiteside.

And though it’s remarkable that a Cameroonian kid who didn’t know much English seven years ago is now better at the Internet than anyone in the NBA, it’s not quite as remarkable as the fact that a Cameroonian kid who didn’t play organized basketball until seven years ago is the future of the NBA. But if we know him for the former that’s because, unfortunately, Embiid’s career has been more Internet gold than basketball majesty. Drafted out of Kansas in 2014, he was the crown jewel of then-GM Sam Hinkie’s “Trust the Process” rebuilding program (translated, it means: Trust that the best way to go from .500ish Team to Playoff Contender is a multi-year stop at NBA Doormat, to accumulate draft picks). But Embiid had to sit out the first two seasons with injuries. Last season, his third, he finally played thirty-one games and looked magnificent. So magnificent it made the punchline Sixers a must-watch team, and made The Process look….genius. Then Embiid got hurt again, done for the season.

But man, those 31 games! And then this preseason! He showed why he’s the most mythical of all the unicorns in the NBA’s stable. He’s a seven-footer—he claims he’s 6’11”—who’s bulky enough to dominate in the post, smooth enough to shoot the elbow jumper (or the deep three), and somehow coordinated enough to have developed a lethal Dirk Nowitzki impression. Oh, and this bears repeating: He’s only been doing this for seven years—four, really, discounting the time lost to injury.

When you—and fans on League Pass accounts the world over—watch him in tomorrow’s 76ers home opener, it’ll be with that voice in the back of your head: This is incredible. And this could end at any second—again. Which makes basketball’s most unique talent all that more breathtaking. Joel Embiid will be one of the NBA’s greats, unless he’s one of its great what-ifs.

So, while waiting for—and trusting—The Process to work its magic, we asked Joel Embiid about those thirsty Twitter fingers, why he mocked Kevin Durant, and how he’d go about that whole Rihanna thing next time.

Do you get most of your news from Twitter?
Not really. I just get on there to tweet, and then I’m out. I can’t look at my notifications. It’s too much.

How do you find out if one of them has gone viral, then?
I think 90 percent of them [will be viral]. That’s the expectation.

Have you seen the internet’s reaction to the video of you running last night?
[I] heard it was all over the place. All my teammates and the coaches were talking about it. Amir [Johnson] told me that if I was going to do that again, I should let him know. He’s going to come, too.

How did you first get involved with social media?
I got the introduction to the NBA by the tape delay reaction. Before that, I wasn’t really using social media, and after that, I just went on, and I saw how viral it was, and it became a meme. And then I was like, “Hmm. That can be a good platform.” Then I had so much time, too, because I missed that whole year and the second year after, so I didn’t have anything to do. [I’d] just go on social media and converse with fans, make crazy jokes, and tweet crazy stuff because I don’t care. I say whatever I want to. I see a lot of athletes that don’t really use social media or they’re saying the same stuff, I kind of wanted to change the game.

What do you mean some guys are always tweeting the same thing?
Bullshit like, “Game Day!” “It’s a great game.” I don’t know. They’re all the same. It’s boring.

Okay, so the recent tweet that was mocking KD’s burner accounts, take me through the process of how that came about.
I was actually late to that story and then I came in and I see they’re talking about Kevin Durant, and then I go on Twitter, and I see his name trending. And then I’m like, “What happened?” I’m like, “What happened? Did he get hurt?” I felt bad. Then I looked at it, and I’m like, “Oh, shit. He has a ghost account? This is about to be a field day for me.”

I don’t believe that he has a second account. I just thought he was, I don’t know, drunk. Maybe he was playing and calling himself in the third person. I thought it would be fun, and tweeted something about it. But, yeah, it was kind of weird that he has a second account.

I know you're a big NBA 2K guy. Do you always play as the Sixers?
Sometimes. When I play 2K, I’ll play in GM mode. And I choose different teams. But I always trade for myself because I’m unstoppable. Literally there’s no way to stop me in 2K. I average like 40 and 15, and like 8 assists, and be MVP of the year.

So give me an example of the time you’ve with a team and you’ve traded for yourself. Who did you trade?
It takes a lot. I mean even LeBron James is not as valuable as me in 2K.

If you’re not playing with the Sixers, who are you playing with? The Cavs?
Nah, they’re too good. I gotta start with a team that sucks, like the Lakers or the Nets. I gotta make it fair. I’m the master of trading, so even with the Nets, they don’t have like high-rated players in the game, but I get someone like me and the number one pick for the next draft.

When was the first time you recognized that you were really good at basketball?
Well, I don’t think I’ve realized that. I see I’ve got a lot to work on. Especially developing my body. And then everything is going to fall in place. But as a basketball player, I think I’m fine. There’s been a few times where I’ve been like, “Damn. I didn’t know I could do that.” Or my first few games in the league, to see how easy it was for me to score. Me averaging twenty points last year. I didn’t think I was a scorer, that I could score the ball, but I found it, and then I kept getting better until I got hurt. But I don’t think I figured out that actually, like, “Oh, shit, I’m good at basketball.” It’s coming though.

Do you remember a time when you had that reaction when you were like, “I didn’t know I could do that”?
The Utah game where I did the Hakeem fake. Back in college in the New Mexico game where I did the Hakeem Dream Shake. There’s been a few times when I’ve been like, “Oh. That was nice.”

A lot of people expect a lot from you, and I’m curious how you handle that pressure.
I love it. I know this year there’s a lot of pressure on us to make the playoffs. We got a lot of potential, but the key is just to stay healthy, and I think as long as we all stay healthy—especially me—we have a chance. But I love being in pressure moments. I love taking the last shot. I love taking the last free throws to seal the games. I just want to make it so I can go to the crowd and be like, “Shut the fuck up.”

When you first started, where did you think you’d be at this point?
Everything happened so fast. I always say that my life is a movie. Going back to Cameroon, where I started playing in 2011, and then getting to the States. My junior year in high school I played JV with little kids. Then, I transferred to one other school my senior year, and that’s when I got offers from big-time schools. I signed with Kansas even though I wasn’t ranked in high school until the end.

And then I go to Kansas, thought I was going to be a five-year guy and actually wanted to redshirt. I told Coach [Bill Self]. And he was like, “No, you’re going to be the number one pick in two years.” He was talking about after my sophomore year. And then just like that, I end up being considered [for] the number one pick [after my freshman year], and end up being the third pick. I go through a period of darkness where I miss my two years and then I come back this past year, where everybody is surprised and everybody falls in love. And then here I am again. So everything just happens so fast.

How did you stay positive during those two years?
Outside looking in, it looked like I was positive, but on the inside I wasn’t. It was hard. I wanted to quit basketball. I wanted to go back home. And then at that time, too, I lost my brother [Embiid’s 13-year-old brother passed away in 2014.], so that just made it so hard. I definitely wanted to quit basketball. But in my mind I was always like: I started and I’ve just got to finish it. This year helped me a lot, because even before this year, I still didn’t know what I would be as a player because I missed two years. I think people always tend to forget that even during the two years, I didn’t practice with the team, I didn’t play any five-on-five. So I didn’t get new experience.

How close did you come to actually quitting?
I don’t think I would have done it, but every day I kept thinking about it. I’m like: “Can’t play basketball. Gotta get a second surgery. My brother died.” Everything was going wrong, so in my mind, every day, like, “I can’t do this. I just want to go home and hide and be with my family.”

Do they know “Trust The Process” in Cameroon?
Not really. They don’t watch basketball over there. They just know that I’m tall. It’s hard to watch basketball over there because it comes on at like two or three in the morning. I started liking basketball when I was 13, but I couldn’t play because my dad thought it was too physical. I would try to watch it, but it was too late and the next day I had to go to school, so my mom never really allowed me. The first time I watched basketball was in 2010. The Lakers [in] the Finals. And that’s where I fell in love with basketball. That’s how I became a Kobe fan and a Lakers fan.

Did your parents get to see you play last season?
They came here for a couple of games. I actually had one of my best games because my mother had never watched me play basketball. My dad came to Kansas, but that was only his first time. So this was his second time watching me play basketball. It was against Phoenix, I started out hot, like I think had like 13 points in four minutes. In the first quarter, I was on fire. I ended up with like 28 in 20 minutes. [Ed.: He had 10 in four minutes, and 26 in 20.]

You said in a SLAM story in March that if The Process is like one of those loading bars, going from 0 to 100 percent, you were at about 5-10 percent. Where are you now?
The Process is never going to end. I don’t think The Process is ever going to reach 100 percent. It’s a process to make the playoffs. It’s another one to make the conference final. Another one to make it to the NBA finals and win the championship. And when you win the championship that year, then it starts all over again. So it’s just a cycle. Then it applies to work within your life whenever you’ve got something going on and you know that as long as you put in the work, you’ve just got to trust the process. Everything happens for a reason.

Where’s the strangest place you heard someone yell, “Trust the process!”?
All-Star Weekend in New Orleans, I was doing community service and there was like sixteen-year-olds walking by and one [was] yelling at me was like, “Joel, I want to have your babies. Trust the process.” I was like, “What? You want to have my babies? You’re another man.”

Who was the trademark on “Trust The Process?”
Some guy. I don’t know who. But I have the trademark on “The Process.”

I heard you wanted to be an astronaut when you were a kid?
I just liked space. As a kid first I wanted to be president. I just figured that because I was good in math I wanted to be that.

You've got to tweet at Elon Musk, man, tell him you want to go in space.
I know. How much you gotta pay? Like half a mill or something like that? You don’t even get to space. You just get some point in the air. I want to go to space. That would be incredible.

If you could go back and give advice to your sixteen-year-old self, when you first started playing ball, what would you say?
I would say, “Don’t ever talk to Rihanna.”

Have you heard from Rihanna recently?
Nah, I met her a few times, but that’s about it.

Did she laugh about the tweets?
Yeah, she actually did.

So it worked.
It worked, but you know, I got a lot more to worry about. Basketball is more important. But yeah, I would say, “Don’t talk to Rihanna. Don’t tweet at her.”

This interview has been edited and condensed.