Skip to content
Sixers
Link copied to clipboard

Sixers’ Joel Embiid considering playing for France at 2024 Olympics: report

The Sixers center has never played in the Olympics. That could change when Paris hosts the Summer Games in 2024.

Sixers center Joel Embiid holds the basketball against the Toronto Raptors during game two of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals playoffs on Monday, April 18, 2022 in Philadelphia.
Sixers center Joel Embiid holds the basketball against the Toronto Raptors during game two of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals playoffs on Monday, April 18, 2022 in Philadelphia.Read moreYONG KIM / Staff Photographer

While Joel Embiid is sidelined from the Sixers’ opening playoff games in Miami, he’s apparently passing part of the time by looking into the future.

French TV and radio network RMC Sport reported that Embiid has opened discussions with France’s national basketball team about changing his nationality to play for France, which could culminate with him playing for the host nation of the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

» READ MORE: With his latest injury, Joel Embiid is becoming a tragic figure in Philly sports

It’s not the first time that Embiid, a Cameroon native who has family in France, has considered playing for France. He has never played for Cameroon, though the country has tried to get him to do so. (Another Cameroonian in the NBA whom Embiid knows well, Toronto’s Pascal Siakam, has said he’d like to play for the country but also hasn’t done so yet.)

FIBA, global basketball’s governing body, allows one naturalized player per squad, and France doesn’t have one right now. The team does have multiple NBA stars in Rudy Gobert, Evan Fournier, and Nicolas Batum.

Fournier and France’s greatest all-time player, Tony Parker, said in 2018 that they’re against the idea of naturalized players playing for France.

» READ MORE: Joel Embiid’s complicated injury history: Breaking down every setback he’s suffered as a Sixer