Brian Windhorst of ESPN was on the show “First Take” talking about Team USA approaching the opener against Serbia on Sunday and the topic was brought up of players that could impact the most on the squad. The person that came to mind for Windhorst was not one of the main players on the team like LeBron James or Stephen Curry, but it was Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid.
Windhorst would talk how huge of an impact Embiid could have on a team, especially with his size as he is the tallest on USA at seven-foot where the other bigs are Anthony Davis at six-foot, 10 inches and Bam Adebayo listed at six-foot, nine inches. He would double down on his statement that Embiid will be crucial in matchups like against Serbia and France where they have immense size like Nikola Jokic, Victor Wembanyama, and Rudy Gobert.
He would even say that the 76ers star could be “the difference” between Team USA winning the gold and not.
“Against these teams that have huge size like Nicola Jokic, like the French who have Victor Wembanyama and Rudy Gobert, he's gonna be extremely important for the Americans,” Windhorst said. “The difference between the Americans winning the gold and not could end up being Joel Embiid. This is not a luxury player. This is a necessity player, Grant Hill recruited him over the course of a year to get him to say yes, this is an extremely big deal to get Joel Embiid to play.”
Embiid injury history addressed with Team USA
There will always be some concern from Embiid playing on Team USA during the Olympics since he has had a long injury history. Windhorst would talk about that general sentiment and say that “he's never going to be free from the concern about injury” and that he should just play if he is healthy enough.
“If he's healthy enough to play, he should play you know,” Windhorst said. “The Sixers are part of this process and you know they support it and so that's you know, that's just reality I mean the idea that you know he shouldn't play is based on the idea that you know that he could get injured more. He's never going to be free from the concern about injury, that's what his life is going forward so look, he's actually looked really good his last several games where the team has struggled a little bit, he's been a bright spot.”
Windhorst explains the truth regarding American-born big men in NBA
Windhorst would bring up a valid point that one of the main reasons why Team USA went out of their way to get a “naturalized” player like Embiid, originally born in Cameroon, was because the country doesn't have elite big-men.
“The reason they went out and got a naturalized player is because we as Americans don't have a lot of great centers,” Windhorst continued. Look at all the great senators in the league, they're all foreign born so Joel playing should not be something to be criticized, it should be considered something to be applauded. And I'm not so sure why it defaults to the criticism and I guess maybe that's one of the reasons why he feels that he's hated.”
Team USA will now focus on bringing home some gold as the Paris Olympics opener will be Sunday morning when they take on Jokic and Serbia.
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