Joel Embiid’s NBA journey has been one for the ages. He didn’t play basketball until he was a teenager and there were huge doubts about his durability, but his natural skills and God-given talents were just too good to ignore.
Despite not being around hoops for long, Embiid was a consensus top-3 prospect in his draft class. However, his career got off to a slow start as he missed his first two seasons due to injury.
Fast-forward to today and Embiid is a leading MVP candidate and the franchise player the Philadelphia 76ers were craving for. But in reality, he never thought he’d stand a chance to be an NBA player.
Sixers News: Joel Embiid Never Thought He’d Become An NBA Player
“I didn’t start playing basketball until I was 16,” Embiid said on Draymond Green’s podcast.“Before that, I was playing soccer, I was playing volleyball, so I was actually about to go to France to try to become a professional volleyball player until Luc Mbah a Moute came back to Cameroon and had a camp — a camp I didn’t even want to go to because I had just started playing basketball like three months before that.”
“So I was like yo I’m not good enough. You know these guys they’ve been playing basketball their whole lives and there’s no way I’m gonna get picked for his camp.” Embiid added. “And that was at the time I thought I was gonna be in college for like five years and I really didn’t think I had the potential to be in the NBA because my whole goal coming to America was to use this basketball opportunity to try to get a degree and make something out of my life. Go back home and, you know, make money and help my family. And all that stuff so I never believed that I had any chance in basketball.”
Embiid is now playing under a$147,710,050, fully guaranteed contract and is expected to fetch another massive payday when he hits free agency in 2023. He sure made some money to help his family.
