It was less than one year ago when Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid made the decision to play international for Team USA, spurning his native Cameroon and France in the process. When Embiid committed to playing for the 2024 U.S. Olympic team in Paris, he stated that his primary motivation was to win a gold medal for his son, who was born in the United States in September 2020.
“I’m really proud and excited about this decision,” Embiid said on Twitter back in October 2023. “It was not easy. I am blessed to call Cameroon, France, and the USA home. After talking to my family, I knew it had to be Team USA. I want to play with my brothers in the league. I want to play for my fans because they’ve been incredible since the day I came here. But most of all, I want to honor my son who was born in the US. I want my boy to know I played my first Olympics for him.”
But in addition to wanting to represent Team USA for his American-born son, Embiid recently acknowledged that it was the mid-90s decision of Nigerian-born center Hakeem Olajuwon to become a naturalized citizen of the United States and eventually compete for Team USA in the Olympics that was partially responsible for why Embiid made the same decision.
Sixteen years before Hakeem Olajuwon suited up for Team USA in the 1996 Summer Olympics, he represented Nigeria in the All-Africa Games as a seventeen year old. It was this involvement with the Nigerian team that ultimately made his quest to play for Team USA a difficult one, because FIBA rules prohibited players from representing multiple countries in international competition. However, Olajuwon became a naturalized American citizen in 1993 and received an exemption to be able to play in the 1996 Games. Joel Embiid's journey has been remarkably similar.
It's not the only remarkable similarity between the two MVP centers.
Joel Embiid's admiration of The Dream
In 2017, Hakeem Olajuwon noted that he saw similarities between his own game and Embiid's. He wasn't the first, nor was he the last to make this connection. Two of Olajuwon's former teammates in Houston, Scott Brooks and Kenny Smith, have made the comparison as well. In 2021, Brooks told reporters, “I was fortunate enough to play with Olajuwon for three years. He's [Joel Embiid] doing things that I haven't seen since then.” One year later, Kenny Smith stated that Embiid was the closest thing to Olajuwon or Shaquille O'Neal in the modern NBA.
In 2023, while sitting on a panel at the Variety + Sportico's Sports & Entertainment Summit, Embiid was asked about how Hakeem Olajuwon shaped his own personal journey to the NBA. He had spoken about the influence Olajuwon had on him on numerous occasions in the past, citing a DVD of Olajuwon highlights as one he studied as he was learning the game of basketball. But never had Embiid spoken as candidly about The Dream as he did then.
“It all started with him,” Embiid said. “From the first time that I learned about basketball, Hakeem was one of the guys. Just watching him, the way he moves, the way he just dances on the floor, it's fun. And then him being African and also having the same type of story that I have, started playing basketball late and making it to this level. I think that was the guy.”
Joel Embiid can continue to emulate Hakeem Olajuwon if he helps lead Team USA to another Olympic Gold Medal, just as Olajuwon and Team USA did in 1996. From there, Embiid hopes that like Olajuwon, he'll soon be able to call himself an NBA Champion.
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