Joel Embiid has dedicated to play for Team USA at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, CBS Sports’ Bill Reiter showed Thursday. The reigning NBA MVP used to be additionally taking into account taking part in for France subsequent summer season. Embiid, a local of Cameroon, was a United States citizen in September 2022 and a French citizen a couple of months earlier than that.
Last summer, Boris Diaw, the overall supervisor of the French males’s nationwide workforce, mentioned that Embiid sought after to play for France however could not as a result of a hand harm. Since then, there was a quiet recruiting fight, which USA Basketball reportedly received on Thursday.
This week, Embiid and Team USA managing director Grant Hill had a gathering in Fort Collins, Colorado, the website of Philadelphia 76ers coaching camp, and on Thursday morning Embiid let Hill know that he had selected the United States, in accordance to ESPN. He made this choice as a result of he sought after to assist Team USA rebound from its fourth-place end at the FIBA World Cup this summer season, per ESPN.
Barring a sequence of accidents or adjustments of middle, the 2024 iteration of the workforce can be a lot older and extra star-studded than the 2023 one. Embiid is becoming a member of an extended listing of gamers who’ve expressed their intentions to play at the Olympics, amongst them Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Devin Booker, Jayson Tatum and Kawhi Leonard.
Losing out on Embiid is certainly a large blow for France, however it’ll nonetheless have a large addition: Victor Wembanyama, the highest select in the 2023 NBA Draft, has mentioned he intends to play for his nation at the Olympics.Â