Joel Embiid

• 1. Introduction

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  Joel Embiid scored 70 points on the 22nd of January 2024, breaking a franchise record that had stood since Wilt Chamberlain set it in 1967. He did it in a regular-season game against the San Antonio Spurs, finishing with 70 points, 18 rebounds, and five assists. At that moment, Embiid became only the ninth player in NBA history to reach 70 points in a single game, and the third center ever to do so.

  He had started playing basketball at 15. He had missed his first two NBA seasons entirely due to injury. He had nicknamed himself "the Process" as a kind of dark humor about the team's rebuilding era. And yet here he was, rewriting the record books alongside Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

  How does a kid who grew up playing volleyball in Yaoundé, Cameroon, become an NBA MVP? What does it take to play through orbital fractures, torn meniscuses, and a Bell's Palsy diagnosis? And what does it mean to be a Cameroonian-born player who wins an Olympic gold medal for the United States while French fans boo him in Paris? Those are the questions this story sets out to answer.

• 2. An Unlikely Start

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  Luc Mbah a Moute spotted Embiid at a basketball camp and immediately took the teenager under his wing. Both men were natives of Yaoundé, and Mbah a Moute, already an NBA player, recognized something worth developing in the raw, 15-year-old Embiid. That encounter changed the trajectory of Embiid's life.

  Before basketball, Embiid had planned to play professional volleyball in Europe. His father, Thomas, was a military officer, and the family's sporting world had been volleyball and soccer. Basketball was an afterthought until Mbah a Moute's mentorship gave Embiid a reason to pursue it seriously. With that guidance, Embiid moved to the United States at 16 to dedicate himself to the sport.

  He enrolled at Montverde Academy, the same school Mbah a Moute had attended, but left after his first year when playing time failed to come. He transferred to The Rock School in Gainesville, Florida, a Christian academy, and his game accelerated rapidly. As a senior he led The Rock School to a 33-4 record and a state championship, averaging 13.0 points, 9.7 rebounds, and 1.9 blocks per game.

  Rivals.com rated him a five-star recruit, and in November 2012 he committed to the University of Kansas. There, alongside Andrew Wiggins, he posted 11.2 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 2.6 blocks per game across 28 games. He was named one of 30 finalists for the Naismith College Player of the Year on the 13th of February 2014, earned Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year honors, and was named second-team All-Big 12. Then a stress fracture in his back ended his season before the conference tournament, leaving Kansas to lose in the round of 32 without him.

• 3. The Long Wait

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  On the 20th of June 2014, the Philadelphia 76ers selected Embiid with the third overall pick in the NBA draft. Six days earlier, he had undergone surgery on a broken navicular bone in his right foot. The selection made him the highest-drafted player from Cameroon in NBA history, and only the third Cameroonian-born player in the league, after Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje and his own mentor, Mbah a Moute.

  Embiid signed his rookie contract on the 26th of August 2014, but would not play a single game that year. The 2014-15 season passed in recovery rooms. On the 13th of June 2015, a CT scan revealed the foot had healed less than expected. On the 18th of August 2015, he underwent a second round of surgery on the same foot. The 2015-16 season passed the same way.

  Two full seasons gone. Two years of standing courtside in street clothes. He was drafted to be the cornerstone of a team intentionally losing games to accumulate draft picks, a strategy the 76ers called "the Process." Embiid leaned into the phrase, nicknaming himself "the Process" and turning it into both personal branding and a kind of self-deprecating acknowledgment of how uncertain everything remained.

  When he finally debuted on the 26th of October 2016 against the Oklahoma City Thunder, he played 25 minutes and recorded 20 points, seven rebounds, and two blocks in a 103-97 loss. The wait was over, but a torn meniscus in his left knee cut that first season to just 31 games. He still made the NBA All-Rookie First Team, giving some indication of what two lost years had been keeping from the league.

• 4. Injury, Record, Repeat

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  On the 15th of November 2017, Embiid scored 46 points against the Los Angeles Lakers, the most by a Philadelphia player in 11 years. He shot 14 for 20 from the field, added 15 rebounds, seven assists, and seven blocked shots, becoming the first NBA player with 40 points, seven assists, and seven blocks in a game since Julius Erving did it against the Detroit Pistons in 1982. The performance raised an immediate question: what happens when this player stays healthy?

  The answer kept getting interrupted. In March 2018, he suffered an orbital fracture of his left eye. That spring, he returned to the playoffs for the first time, helping the 76ers defeat the Miami Heat before falling to the Boston Celtics in five games. After a Game 5 loss, the NBA confirmed that a foul should have been called on a potential game-tying Embiid layup in the final seconds.

  In 2019, the 76ers lost a seven-game second-round series to the Toronto Raptors. Embiid recorded 21 points and 11 rebounds in Game 7, but the Raptors won on a Kawhi Leonard shot that bounced on the rim several times before dropping through at the buzzer. In the 2021-22 playoffs, he injured his thumb in Game 3 against Toronto, played through a soft cast, and then suffered a concussion and a right orbital fracture the following day, missing the first two games of the next series.

  Each season brought new statistics and new physical damage. By the 2021-22 season, Embiid averaged 30.6 points per game, winning the NBA scoring title and becoming the first center to lead the league in scoring since Shaquille O'Neal in 2000. He was also the first center to average over 30 points per game since Moses Malone in 1982, and the first foreign player ever to win an NBA scoring title. The following season he averaged 33.1 points, took a second straight scoring title, and on the 2nd of May 2023, won the NBA Most Valuable Player Award.

• 5. The 70-Point Night

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  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had gone 16 consecutive games with at least 30 points and 10 rebounds for the Milwaukee Bucks during the 1971-72 season. By January 2024, Embiid was chasing that streak. On the 15th of January he matched Abdul-Jabbar with 16 straight such games. On the 20th of January he reached 20 consecutive games, joining James Harden and Wilt Chamberlain as the only players in NBA history to score at least 30 points in 20 or more consecutive games.

  Two days later, on the 22nd of January 2024, Embiid scored 70 points against the San Antonio Spurs, ending with 70 points, 18 rebounds, and five assists. He broke the 76ers franchise record for points in a game that Wilt Chamberlain had set in 1967. He became the first player in NBA history to score at least 70 points, grab 15 rebounds, and add five assists in a single game.

  The season did not finish without further medical drama. Jonathan Kuminga of the Golden State Warriors fell on Embiid's left knee diving for a loose ball in early February 2024. Embiid missed the rest of the regular season with a lateral meniscus injury. He returned for the playoffs against the New York Knicks and, in a press conference after a 50-point performance in Game 3, disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Bell's Palsy and had been managing migraines and blurred vision. Philadelphia lost that series in six games.

  His career scoring average through the 2023-24 regular season stood at 34.7 points per game, the highest single-season average of his career.

• 6. Three Flags, One Choice

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  France granted Embiid citizenship in July 2022, describing him as "a foreigner whose naturalization is of exceptional interest." French President Emmanuel Macron had personally called him to make the case for wearing the French jersey at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Embiid also became a U.S. citizen in September 2022. He was legally eligible to compete for Cameroon, France, or the United States.

  He chose Team USA. His stated reason centered on his son, who was born in the United States. In his own words: "I want my boy to know I played my first Olympics for him." During the Paris Games, French fans booed Embiid repeatedly for declining to represent France. He averaged 11.2 points, 3.8 rebounds, and 1.4 assists across five games while shooting 56.8% from the field. Team USA won the gold medal.

  Embiid has not permanently closed the door on representing Cameroon in the future, though any such switch would require approval from FIBA and the United States men's national basketball team. The next possible window would be 2028.

  His connection to his birth country found another outlet off the court. In 2023, Embiid founded Miniature Géant, a production studio, in partnership with LeBron James's SpringHill Company. The studio focuses on African storytelling, with creative head Sarah Kazadi-Ndoye describing the projects' common denominator as "Africa and the joys and the quest of African people and the African diaspora." By 2024, Miniature Géant had announced a documentary about Dutch-Ghanaian soccer star Memphis Depay, a film about African athletes in American football called Backline, and a documentary about Cameroonian mixed martial arts fighter Francis Ngannou.

• 7. The Person Behind the Stats

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  Arthur Embiid died on the 16th of October 2014, in a car crash in Cameroon. He was Joel's younger brother. The death came weeks after Joel had signed his rookie contract and just before his draft year began to unfold. Embiid has never spoken extensively about it publicly, but when a columnist wrote an article touching on his son and his late brother in November 2024, Embiid shoved the reporter in a locker room and received a three-game suspension.

  Outside of grief and competition, Embiid is known for his social media presence and what those around him describe as a playful approach to trolling. He is Catholic, does not drink, and is an avid supporter of Real Madrid CF. He has been in a relationship with Brazilian model Anne de Paula since 2018, and the couple married in July 2023. Their son was born in September 2020.

  In March 2021, Embiid donated the entirety of his ,000 NBA All-Star Game winnings to fight homelessness in Philadelphia. The NBA recognized the gesture with the Community Assist Award in April 2021.

  Beyond basketball, Embiid speaks three languages: English, French, and Basaa. The breadth of that linguistic range points back to his origins: a Cameroonian childhood where French is one of two official languages and Basaa is a regional tongue spoken in the center and coastal regions of the country. He arrived in the United States at 16 knowing none of the culture, navigating a new game under the mentorship of a single compatriot. The on-court records are one measure of how far that journey went. Miniature Géant's forthcoming adaptation of Sebastian Abbot's book "The Away Game," about African boys scouted for a prestigious soccer academy, suggests Embiid is also thinking about the journeys of others who might follow a similar path.