April 9, 2022 • 47 mins
Welcome to The Big Niang Theory! On episode six, Georges Niang and Lauren Rosen go in-depth with Joel Embiid, following Joel's journey from playing basketball for the first time at age 16, to becoming one of the best players alive just over a decade later. From growing up in Cameroon, to his ever-growing love for Philadelphia, to becoming a dad, get to know the eighth-year 76er on a deeper level.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Big Niang Theory. Let us my podcast.
Joel is a card shark. Danny gets swindled fashions. I
just like stuff that looks greatness, just breads greatness, and
the offit right in. Welcome back everyone to the Big
Niang Theory. Today we had an unbelievable guest. He had
(00:21):
a ton of insight on his life, his journey and
what motivates him and how he goes about attacking the
daily and challenges of his life. Joel Embiide and I
thoroughly enjoyed it. You know, I feel like I've grown
to have a good relationship with Joel, but it's just
something about him that, you know, when he gets down
and has a conversation, he learned so much about his life,
(00:47):
his journey, what motivates him, and it was a it
was a special episode today. I've been so lucky to
watch Joel over these last four seasons and sort of
watch him a sin into this MVP that he is.
But it's almost been more fun to watch how he's
grown off the court as his life has changed, the
(01:09):
way that he leads has changed, And so I thought
it was an absolute pleasure and a privilege to hear
him reflect on both the encourt and the off court stuff. Yeah. No,
he is some unreal insight and I just think the
way he thinks about things off the court is like
in a very unique way. But that makes Joel Joel,
(01:31):
and then he's an impressive person all around. His life
really is like a movie. It is. He even says it. So,
without further ado, here's Joel Embiid. Yeah, I know, welcome
everybody to another episode of The Big Niang Theory. I'm
(01:52):
George Niang along with my co host Lauren Rosen, and
we are super excited about this guest. Today. Joel Ebid
is in the building trust the process himself. Joel, thanks
for coming on today. Of course just for me right
because we have a special bond. But if I was
missing some shots, Joe, I'll be like, I'm not coming on. No.
(02:15):
But I mean before we really get into the meat
of it, I mean, you've been in the league now,
not nine nine eight years, eight years, eight years, all
of them in Philly, which we talked about on a
couple of our podcasts. That's like rare to have, you know,
being on one team. And I mean mean Laura we're
talking before. Your journey is so unique. I mean the
(02:37):
beginning it was struggling, you know, to get healthy and
then you know, literally having we talked about all the time,
you had like one hundred and twenty seven different teammates
and now you're looking at us being championship contenders. How
have you been able to stay in the mindset of
continuing to grow your career and later on in the podcast,
(02:58):
we'll get about your off the court stuff and growing
up as like a man, but like continue to grow
and get better and embrace these new challenges because I mean,
Lord knows you could have you know, crumbled early on
with all the things that were going on. I mean,
Philly is a tough city to you know, have all
those losing seasons and then for you to just continue
to show up every day and bring this franchise to
(03:20):
where it is now, I'm not sure exactly. I think
he's just about I've always been competitive, obviously starting to
play basketball so late. But you know, in all the
all the sports that that I was part of or
that I played, UM doesn't matter what I did, I
was always competitive and and I love challenges. UM, So
(03:43):
you know, when I started playing. Obviously it adn't especially
in the NBA. He didn't get off to a good start.
You know, I had to fight through, you know, whether
it was Andrewis or the loss of my brother or
you know, all the negative stuff that was going on
around me. The tape too, because at that time till
the team was not in a good stage. It was
(04:06):
a bunch of losing. It was extremely frustrating, but I
kind of really took it upon myself until, you know,
want to be I wouldn't say the savior, but kind
of like I want to be the guy that kind
of puts fill it back to where I feel it
(04:27):
is supposed to be. Because when you talk about whether
it's the previous seasons you talk about, you know, back
in the day, I wasn't watching, but you know the
stories that I hear from, you know, whether it was
AI and you know the movement, you know, I just
attracted everything, everybody the whole ward. Then it was all
(04:48):
about the Saxes. So I kind of wanted to be
the first guy to put fill it back to where
he used to be. But at times it was tough.
It was extreme tough. But I think my background, the
way I was Race helped me navigate through all these situations.
(05:09):
You know, it was tough growing up the way I
was race. You know, I was my mom my dad,
you know that were always hard on me. So I
think that helped me a lot. When you did JJ's
podcast last week, The Old Man in the Three, something
that stood out to me was you talked about going
to Kansas and wanting to get a job and make
(05:29):
money to support your family in Cameroon. Fast forward and
instead of doing that, you end up in the NBA. Yeah,
you're fighting for MVP, which we're going to talk about,
but more than that, you're not just supporting the people
you set out to support. You're supporting hundreds of families
in Philadelphia, really putting down roots in different communities, supporting
(05:50):
people you don't even know. How does it feel to
know what your goal was and reflect on what you're
actually doing instead? Feels great? I mean the goal coming
coming to the US, Uh. You know, I've said it
so many times and I still It's not because I
want any credit. It's more about wanting to be kind
(06:13):
of like, I don't know how to explain it. I
want people to believe in themselves when I when I
always mentioned this when I always said that, you know,
starting to play basketball eleven years ago, I don't know
where you know, a sixteen years old like you know,
you know, think about you know, being not being from
here and coming here and not knowing the language is
(06:36):
not known everybody, and like I just want people to
kind of understand that anything is possible, that you know,
if you really want to put your mind up to
do something, that you can achieve it. And you know,
going back to your coming uh, you know, really coming
to the US, it was more about, Okay, I'm just
(06:58):
gonna use the supportunity to try to get a degree
because at the time, I'm like, I just started playing basketball.
I don't believe in myself. There's no chance I'm gonna
make it to the league. So you know, I get
an opportunity to get free education. So I'm like, well,
you know, a degree in America is extremely important. If
I go back to Cameroon, I'm gonna make a lot
(07:20):
of money, like just using that degree and found a
really great job because of the education that I got
in America. So that's the way I was thinking. And
you know, fast forward, you know, I'm lucky and blessed
to be in this situation where you know, God gave
me the talent and I'm just taking the advantage of
(07:43):
it and just walking hard every single day. But you know,
you know, since I've been in the league, that was
always one of the main goals for me to try
to help as many people as I can. Obviously, you
can't help everybody, and I wish a lot of people,
especially the wealthy, extremely wealthy people, because there's so much
(08:07):
money in this world. Then I feel like if everybody
just came together and you know, put a lot of money,
I feel like it could help a lot of people,
like you could solve a lot of a lot of
issues in the whole world. But that's always been my
mindset to try to help as many people as I can,
(08:28):
especially because I lived through it, I saw it growing up.
So yeah, I mean, just to hear you, like when
Lauren told me that you talked about that on the
Old Man in the Three, just to hear that, like,
just how humble you are for everything that you have
going on, and the crazy part is the achievements that
(08:49):
you've had. You're like, I don't want to say you're
the only superstar that doesn't like boast about those things,
but like you really have to dig to find stuff
about you. Like I think the craziest part is, I'm
going to go back to the basketball round, but like
how much scrutiny you've taken for whether it was early
in your career not being able to do this, or
you're only a little post player, you're only this, And
(09:09):
it's like it just seems like every challenge that comes
your way, you achieveven and you get there. Like we
talked about earlier, you're gonna you're gonna make it work,
but you don't speak about it. You never you never
speak about it. Like another thing is people this year
were like, can Joel Embiid stay healthy enough to play
in that many games? And I don't know how many
games are you playing, but there's not too many games
(09:30):
where you're that was the case last year. That's why
I'm made a comment to the other day ball, you know,
talking about d MVP A ball. I don't know what
I have to do at this point because last year,
when if you think about it, it was you didn't
play enough games. And then I was like, Okay, shure,
I'm gonna come back this year I'm gonna, you know,
(09:53):
put that argument aside and all that stuff. And I
played enough games. So that's why I'm like, Okay, what
else do I have to do and not? And it's okay.
I think I'm humble, but a lot of people probably
don't think I am because I'm argue. But that's just
me being competitive because I'm a basketball player. Like you know,
(10:14):
as I started realizing what type of talent I had,
you know, I'm extremely competitive. I want to be the best,
and nowadays, he's unfortunate that, you know, to be you know,
I want to. I want to be wearing top five,
top ten, the best player ever. Buddy's unfortunate that nowadays
(10:36):
to be up there, you gotta you know, you gotta
show awards. You know, I'm in the MVPs, you have
Defensive Player of the Year. I'm any championships you have.
So like that's why, to me is also important because
like that's my that's my nature. I'm competitive. I want
to I want to be there, and I know that,
(10:57):
oh if that's a cartrayer to be up there, then
I want to have something to show full. So like
he's almost like, well, just tell me what I had
to do next year, like, hey, like it doesn't matter,
Like I don't care if I win it or that
if I don't, just tell me what I had to
do next year. Trust me, I'm gonna come back and
(11:21):
do it. And if you want to put on another crostraate,
well I'm gonna come back to follow You're gonna do
it again. Right, And you look at this year like
because you look how they say they said that last year,
and then you look at this year you have to
come back. And I don't know if we've ever really
got to talk about, but the mindset that you had
to come into this year with and I don't want
to get two in depth with it because you know
(11:41):
it's a thing in the past, but you had to
come in knowing whatever was happening with our roster before that,
that you were going to have a boatload of the minutes,
the points, the pressure to make this team run. And
you know, whether that was playing games or scorings, are
doing things down the stretch or getting guys shots. You
(12:05):
answered the bell on that. So how did you mentally
prepare yourself to get ready for that type of challenge
going into the year, Because nobody understands it because when
you think about it, I mean, missing that much money
off a roster is significant and we had to go
a long period of time to do that. But I
don't know what the exact numbers are. I know we
(12:25):
were top four in the East while that was all
happening to yeah, top three, yeah yeah. Joel always knows
exactly what the numbers were at any given time, like like,
what is your mindset going? And be like all right,
like we had a heartbreaking loss, Like how am I
going to get myself mentally prepared to one? Like now
you know all the attentions on you, and now you know, like, okay,
(12:48):
all the attentions on me. How can I get Tyres shots?
When Seth is here? How can I get him shots?
How can I get shaped George? How can I get
these other guy's shots. We're still making sure that you
can still do what you have to do. I think
goes back to the conversation that me Andrew had in
the summer, you know, and he's always mentioned it in
the past. I've in the past, I've always relied on
(13:13):
everybody to try to be successful. And then he always
try to put it in my mind and was like,
can you carry your team. Can you do whatever's necessary too,
you know, make sure you win games. That doesn't mean
just go on points, whether it's defense, playmaking, and everything
on the basketball floor. So you know, going into the season,
(13:35):
obviously with all the drama that we had, you know,
I took I took on that challenge because that's why
I liked Like he told me it was like can
you do it? And then he was like, I think
you can do it, but I don't think you believe it.
So I was like, Okay, I'm gonna show you. So
we started up the season, I think we were eight
and two and everything was going well, and then obviously
(13:59):
COVID happen, and then you know, I got it, and
then a bunch of us had it, and by the
time we all came back, we were what ten seth
or whatever, like at some point we were like sixteen
and sixteen, and you know, really my mom said, you know,
just coming in is and we I like to joke
(14:19):
about it, and you know, I always tell you guys
that I don't want to pass it, but you know
it's not true because I make the vie play anytime.
Like if Obviously my mom set is like I'm not
gonna go out there and get you ten assists. I
just not me. I want to score the ball. I
want to put the ball in the basket. But then again,
(14:40):
at the same time, I also want to make the
vi play if I get double. At times, I might
shoot over the double team just because you know, I
feel like I can't make that shot. But most of
the time I'm also gonna, you know, make that play
and all that stuff. And what I've learned is that
you know, I can't win alone and I need my teammates.
So over the game, I you know, I got to
(15:02):
pick and choose my spots where you know I can't
be as aggressive as I can, and you know, also
make sure that I get everybody involved because you know,
at some point he's gonna come back and help me,
whether it's at the end of the game and all
that stuff. So really, going into the season without the
drama that we had, you know, my mindset was just
(15:23):
to you know, I basically told myself, I was like,
I'm just gonna come in. First of all, it was
to be a better leader than I've been in the past.
And you know, you you you didn't see me in
the past but I used to be kind of like isolated, like, yeah,
I didn't want to hang out and and I just
(15:43):
you know, on the road, I just wanted to be
in my room chilling all the time, playing video games
and all that stuff. And uh, this year, I just
felt like, you know, with everything I was going on,
I just wanted to come in and kind of bring everybody,
bring everybody together in my own way, not like always
stalking yelling. I know that's all about we got that.
(16:06):
Yeah that's all I'm saying. But that's that's that's not me,
But in my own way, try to bring everybody together.
And I think you know what made it easies is
also that everybody had the same mindset. You know, we
kind of like, yeah, we kind of enjoy the whole drama,
Like we kind of enjoy the moment. Like we we
(16:29):
felt like, you know what, you know, if you with
us fun, if you don't want to be with us,
it is whatever. Like we just felt like, you know,
we just gonna go out then, you know, just have
fun and play with each other and try to win
every single game. You talk about wanting to have fun,
And I think that that's an interesting in my time
with you that I've charted your willingness to let yourself
(16:51):
have fun, because you went through a phase there where
you're like, I'm not gonna have any distractions, I'm not
gonna be on Twitter, I'm not gonna have fun. I'm
taking the joy out. And now you're willing to sort
of add the joy back in. And I think that
that was really apparent early in the season when you
guys decided to shut out the distractions and win for
yourselves and for each other and have a good time.
Which leads me to something that George doesn't know that
I'm going to ask you about. We've talked about this
(17:13):
quote a couple of times on the show, and I
want you to just read it to him and then
just reflect sort of on how you feel now. Is
this the one way he tells me that I suck?
I used to think I used to think he sucked. Honestly, Obviously,
on this seam, he's doing way more than shooting threas.
What I'm in Presswood is is a competitor. It brings
(17:36):
so much joy to all of us all and off
the court. I'm just glad I have him. That was
a lie, but I was just saying that the way
to make a sappy man. We really don't even honestly,
And what I told George after after you said that,
because I was early in the season, that was in November,
and eventually you guys really didn't Yeah, it was his one, right,
(17:57):
you guys didn't really know each other, and George wasn't
really sure how to feel about it. And I said,
if Joel is willing to poke fun at you this soon,
it means that he really likes if you're acting like
I'm sensitive. I don't care what Joel says about me, man, right,
I don't. I don't care at all. This is the
big kne You don't. You don't embarrass me on my podcast.
But Joel tell me why, because it is clear that
(18:19):
you've enjoyed playing with George. Oh man, I think like
I always joke him on with him. You know, he's
always I guess the happy one him meant how rays
always you know, always talking, sometimes talking for no reason,
talking too loud, and when he's not talking like he
(18:40):
tell you like last night. Actually, you know, I'm always
like poking fun out of him and basic good time,
that he's too quiet and all that stuff. Because you
know on any to tell you he's been on our
three teams. Yeah, yeah, he's been on thweet teams. Here
tell you like, like every team needs that top of guy.
(19:01):
And I think that's part of the reason why this
year I'm more open to just be around everybody because
in the past it was like, uh yeah, like guys
were cool and all that stuff, but it wasn't like
there wasn't like someone. I was always uplifting everybody and
(19:21):
you know, always try to bring everybody together, make people smile.
And I guess that simple shake and Matisa the exact
same thing. Because George is who he is, you guys
get to be who you are more naturally for sure. Yeah,
I think I think that's the key. And we never
had that in the past. Uh no disrespect to whoever
has been in Philly with me, but it just hasn't
(19:45):
been the same. And you know, I always go back
to also the drama. The drama I think made us
extremely close. I think he was a sourceful. I think
we enjoyed it. No one was saying no, but it
was like motivation for us to I proved to people
because they were like, if such and such doesn't come
back like they have no chance. It was like it
(20:06):
was like it was it was. It was basically like okay,
like people probably thought that we wein't gonna be as
good and all that stuff, but I've always believe in
myself that you know, as long as I'm on the
basketball floor, we have a chance to win. So to
me and to all of us, he was motivation to
be like yo, like we saw this season eight and
(20:28):
two before all the COVID stuff happened, So from that time,
it was already like, yeah, it doesn't matter what's happening. Um,
you know, if whoever wants to come back, it's welcome.
If that dumb, that's the problem. Uh. And if we
trade for somebody, they're also welcome. But we're gonna do
(20:50):
with what we have and we're gonna succeed. So you
did end up getting somebody new and a couple of
nights ago, James, I don't even know if you know
this made a very convincing case for you to be VP,
having been an MVP himself. You guys have only known
each other for a couple of weeks, but what does
it mean to you to know that someone who's won
this award before who's one of the greatest to ever
play this game, has now sort of thrown himself behind you.
(21:13):
He feels like you should win MVP, but b wants
to do whatever he can to make that happen. That's
he's been. He's been great. Uh it's funny. Uh, you know,
like and you know the coming out that you just
worried about him. I know, I knew it was a
good guy, but he's always better when you actually get
to live it. And you know, we've all heard, you know,
(21:37):
stories about players in the league and all that stuff.
So yeah, so I went, so when you actually get
to be of the personing like someone that you heard
something about, and it's completely different than you know, what
you heard, is almost like this, like this is crazy.
(21:57):
So like with James or anybody that's new on the
team or whatever, I think, you know, especially James, like
he's been. He's been great, you know, just the energy
to joy and you know, going back to the MVP talks,
like he just he's just he's just I think he's
just been doing whatever it's necessary to make sure that
(22:17):
I get it. Uh, And you know that's you know,
I appreciate it a lot because he doesn't have to.
He could He could have come in here and be like,
you know what, like you know, uh, you know, I've
been the best player on the team and uh, you
know I want MVP. And he could have come in
here and try to, you know, impose himself and be
(22:40):
like it's me and you all like it's you or me,
But he's coming and just empowered all of us to
make sure that we all in this together. No, and
like even Tyrese and I think the best thing that
you and James offers the basketball conversations. Like I think
people don't given credit to those two James and Joel
(23:02):
is how like smart they are. Like I've said, James
is a basketball savant. But when you watch Joel and
where the ball goes, like everything is calculated and there's
no like randomness, there's no like everything is done for
a reason. And some people are like, well, why is
he dribbling over there? And then you ask him and
he's like, well, because in my mind I wanted to
(23:22):
move this guy because it's easier when I do this.
And I don't think people get enough credit, give him
enough credit for that. But I think the best part
about James coming alongside him is that they're both basketball savants.
So just the conversation that they're having where it's like, hey, Tyrese,
why don't you look at this, or Tobias look at this,
or George look at this while they're talking about it,
whether we're playing cards or eating you know, it's just
(23:45):
the conversation that they're having that's uplifting everyone else's knowledge.
Because I like to think I'm pretty smart on the basketball,
you know, intellectual level, but like when you hear them talk,
it's like I want to be like a sponge and
soak all into that. I think James has been great
for everybody. He's been great for Joel, but he's been
great for this team, especially when Joel talks about, you know, uplifting.
(24:08):
I know we're kind of getting off the MVP topic,
but before James got here, Joel was uplifting us to
a point to where it was like, Okay, now we
got another jolt, and I think that's what we need,
you know, moving forward, going into the playoffs. You talk
about how smart Joel is, and I don't play with you,
so I don't see the basketball side. But I've always
(24:29):
been so impressed with the way that you handle media
and the way that you can own a room, and
how strategic you are with your answers. And then we
learn more about how much film you study and the
way that you pick apart the game. And I listen
to the guys every time we do an episode talk
about how smart you are. And so I've seen it
from my perspective. George has seen it from his perspective.
At what point in your life growing up did you realize, Okay,
(24:53):
I'm really smart. I know how to handle situations. You
talk about the education piece, wanting to go after an education.
At what point in your life did you realize that
you could really use how apt you are mentally to
get what you want. I don't know. It was probably
after I kicked his ass. Was that I was Oh honestly,
(25:14):
I don't know. Were you a smart kid? Like what
do your parents say about you? Oh? It was pretty school.
I was pretty good in school. Um already more like
hard working? Did you until I hate proberty? You know,
I started acting a little crazy. Okay, tell us more,
what does that mean? Started missing classes and stuff. And
I used to get beat up all the time, but
(25:36):
you know, like physically beat up by other kids. No,
my mom, I was imaginating you because you must have
been a really big kid. I'm like, I'm not worried
about you with other kids on the playground. I was,
I was soft going off, I was. I was. I
was a soft kid. But people were scared on me
obviously just because of your size. I guess. Yeah, but
(26:00):
think goes back to uh I was raised. You know,
we were the way we were race. We were always
on the schedule. Like he was all about school. You know,
going to school, and you know when you come back,
you know, take a shot, you had to take a
nap and then whatever, eat, take a nap, and then
you wake up. You got to study for a son
(26:20):
amount of hours and then you get to hang out
for thirty minutes and then you freaking go to slip.
It's like it was like that, this was my mom. Yeah.
And then in the weekends it was about like just
chilling studying, chilling studying, like it was That's the way
we were raised. So it was always about school. So
(26:41):
but I always had good notes. But going back to
your question, I don't know exactly, but when he comes
to basketball, I think y'all goes back to being competitive
and wanting everything right, wanting to which that's that next level,
wanting to which a level that I want to get to,
(27:01):
you know, being open about everything, listening to everything, taking
everything in and basically figuring, now you know what's good
and what's not. And you know, me Andrew, we watch
We watched so much film after every game. He sends
me a clip, a voiceover with all the clips of
what I should have done, what I should have done better.
(27:22):
We have conversation after every single game that we play,
every single the next day, that's what we do. And
we watched so much filming between from other guys and
all that stuff. So I think, like I was actually
saying in a postgame interview during the game, I was
talking to a coach, Lloyd Pace, you used to be
the assistant here, and I was basically telling him I
(27:44):
was like, a double team ain't gonna walk because that's
the same double team that they used to try to
do when it was a coach for Atlanta, like hard
up Hard Double basically watched Toronto dusting me and to
try to get the ball out of my hand. So
during the game, I was just talking so much trashing them.
I was like I've seen everything. It doesn't matter what
(28:05):
you do. I got connors to everything. It doesn't matter
if you're signed a double troop of teams, I'm gonna
tell George you freaking stay there, and he's gonna get
a wad uper shot. So I'm gonna get guys to
be in different positions, or I'm just gonna get a deposition,
or I'm just gonna get to the now. What he's
gonna be hard or double? And if you want to
(28:27):
double from the now and now, I see the whole court,
and I can make easy passes. And so that I
was basically talking trash from them. I think I'm not
exactly sure. I think I don't know if it's natural
or whatever. I think it's just it's just the way
it is. I guess, are you guys the two best
trash talkers on the team. I don't talk trash. You know,
(28:52):
we talk, we talk trash on it today. I don't know.
I mean, I obviously it's first survival tactics, so you
know what I mean. But you know, I think Joel's
are subtle and pretty funny, you know, like like telling
something like what are you gonna do? Like you can't
stop me. You know, just little things like that where
it's not like outwardly like where the fans can see it,
(29:14):
but it's letting. It's letting you know that he knows
that you're there. But you're not gonna do anything that
probably gets under people's skin, like if you're casual about it.
Oh man, I'm trying to think back because there was
a time. I give you an example, so yesterday after
the game, and I like to get on guys about this.
I'm never asked for a double team in my life,
so every single guy that I play against, I'm always like, well, like,
(29:38):
you're a freaking man, so be a man, Like if
you don't need a double team, you know, to go
tell your coach you can go me one on one.
But also that's also a strategy for me so that
I actually feel like, oh my god, such a man.
I'm such a man. I don't need help or whatever,
like let me go play one on one. Like, but
I'm sorry to say, I've had enough experience to feel like,
(30:03):
you know, if you're gonna play me one on one
is a recipe for disaster. So like, but I'm always
trying to get on guys like yesterday after the game,
I'm talking to the rookie, I'm like, you don't need
no help, Like you've better talk to your coach like yo,
like you a man, like be a man about it,
like I never asked. And then coach pierces right there,
I'm like, coach, if I ever asked for a double
(30:25):
to me in my life, it's like nah. And then
I'm talking to the rookie. I'm like, then you must
be soft. Then if you need a second or third
guy to be guarding me or whatever, Oh my god.
But it's never personal, Like I'm like, I never go
over the line. And to me, the game of basketball
is all about having fun, you know. Like I said,
(30:47):
I'm extremely serious about it, and you know, I got
goals to where I need to be by the by
the time I'm done. But at the end of the day,
it's never is not that personal. There's a lot that
I can't control. Is Joel the best player you've ever
played with? You know? I think I've I've said, no,
(31:09):
you play with DeAndre King. No, I play with Donovan Mitchell.
So yeah you're number two? Yeah, no, I'm number three.
DeAndre King. Oh my god, No, I mean, we don't
have to get into us, but Joel obviously is uh
no Monte Moris. Yeah, he's he's really he's better. He
could go full, he could guard you one on one. Well,
I played with Wayne Selden, so he's better than Joel
(31:31):
mb No. But uh, I think Joel is is the
most unique player that you know, I've ever played with.
I mean, I know, there's just so many different fascests
to his game. And like I talked about it early on,
it's like early on his early on his career, he
was a back to the basket player. And then everyone
knows in basketball it's so easy to double a big
(31:52):
man that only plays with their back to the basket.
They have to give the ball up. If the double
teams waiting there, it's tough to score and you kind
of neutralize their effectiveness. Then he starts stepping out and
making mid range jumpers. Now he's doing it off the dribble.
And when you have a big guy at his size
that can score at all three levels, it makes it
extremely hard to guard. And I think the most impressive
thing that you've done. And I'm done giving you compliments
(32:13):
at this because I don't really like you, um, is
that you've picked your points of went to attack and
went to let the defense think you're going to attack
and pass. And I think once you once you've gotten
to that point, that's what's taking you to this next
beneficial exactly knows what I'm gonna pass the ball. I'm not.
(32:36):
I'm not leaving, Joel, So can we get a lifetime deal?
Enough about this? But wish I wish I was the gaol.
Keep you keep George, I keep George, um, Joel. I
promised you when we were talking about getting you on
the show that we could talk a little bit about
Formula one. I know you're a big fan. Oh my god,
(32:58):
George knows nothing about Formula one. So what I thought
would be fun is if you and I pitch him
on why he would enjoy Formula one, Like I think
it might be the most entertaining sport in the world.
How do you even pitch somebody on Formula one? Do
you have? Do you like costs? Yeah? Like cars, like
racing costs. I feel like that's very dangerous. It is dangerous.
(33:23):
That's why he's Do you like get a thrill watching it?
Like seeing them? Super fun? YEA like one that go
crazy and you know, let's start finding each other. I'm like,
I'm on my TV. Like, but then again, like you
can't take it for granted, because like what they do
is insane, Like you know, at any point you know
(33:44):
that big I don't know, over to like close to
two hundred miles an hour right is where it tops out.
It's the fastest racing cars two hundred. But I don't know,
it's just the thrill of it. It's just I don't
know how that's playing. I don't, I can't. I don't
know how to pitch somebody on Formula again, So like
do you root for like a team or is there
(34:05):
just individuals? Growing up, I used to like my favorite
team is fer Our, okay, and I'm actually happy that
they're doing a great job this year and they have
done I have an opportunity to win the championship this year.
Um two it's teams have two drivers, ten teams two
(34:26):
drivers teams, so for they're doing good this year. But
over the years, there's been one guy that has dominated
the field. Like in Formula one is like there's usually
like two cars that are the best and that everybody
else have no chance. This year is a little different.
It feels like there's like three or four teams, you know,
(34:48):
that might have a chance to win the championship, but
over the years there's one guy, Lewis Hamilton, that that's
been dominant in the field. So last year I was
rooting against see because, like, you know, he's won like
seven times and I'm like, he's always the same person,
Like there needs to be something like someone you So
(35:11):
that's why I was rooting for And I like Lewis,
I'm a big fan, but I just felt like there's like,
for the sake of the sport, they needed to be
someone else. That's just because you love chaos. Yeah, but
that's fun though, Actually you don't. You don't actually love Max.
(35:32):
You just wanted someone else to win because you love chaos.
I mean that's fun. I mean it's like exactly who.
So Max Verstappen won his first World Championship last year. Yeah,
that's why he treated like the step and that's why
during the World Championship we were on the road right, Yeah,
just no, I was home because remember you sent to
(35:54):
put the video of of it like in Twitter or something,
wasn't it. Yeah, we were we were at home. We
were at home, but you gave me it was fund
was crazy the way everything happened, So it's also super unfair.
That's another reason why I think you might like it,
because every team has just like grossly different budgets, but
they're all held to the exact same standard, so they
(36:15):
all have to raise all the same tracks they and
if you win, you're given more money for the next season.
So the good teams keep getting richer and richer and richer,
and the bad teams stay bad. Like it's super unfair.
Every track is different, Like there's so much charity. Basic
could have been good. You gotta have like a billionaire
investor that just comes in and just throws a bunch
(36:36):
of money. And then half of the drivers are like
the kids, not half, but a large chunk of the
drivers are children of those investors. So there's some really
good drivers that will never drive in Formula One because
a lot of seats are taken up by paid drivers.
And then I and those kids good, they're just on
that because our dad father is a billionaire and they
(36:57):
invested in the in the team, and that's just happened.
To have a sit on the But it is not
a fast sport, like there's always over. Over the last
what eight nine years or whatever, there's only been one
team that has been good. And that's why last year
was so exciting because he was like, finally someone different,
(37:17):
someone finally beat them, like someone finally bad my cities,
Like finally is over. So that's why I was happy.
But for our this year is that this is their year.
All right, I'm gonna go get me the team for
sweatshirt for Formula one. And you grew up watching too, right,
like this has always been part of your life, watch sports,
going up everything, soccer Real Madrid. I know that. But
(37:42):
how old were you when you first watched basketball? Oh?
Oh it's probably fourteen. You had never even watched it before. No,
that's crazy. So how old were you when you started playing?
It's probably like six years old. But now you're making
me look bad for twenty two years. Joel has been
playing for eleven years. Yeah, you've been playing basketball double
(38:04):
as long as Joel and you're the same age. Yeah,
I'm getting really uncomfortable. Sorry, okay, but we're talking about someone.
I know. It's it's it's impressive. I would say it's impressive.
I know to me it's like the way I see
it is like like I mentioned in the beginning, like
it's cool, but like I wanted to be a source
(38:24):
of motivation for everybody coming up, especially people from Africa,
because we don't have diesel portunities and we don't have
you know, the money or the budget though you know,
these facilities and to be able to get better and
learn and compete with the rest of the world. So
(38:47):
to me, I want it like every single time that
I get the chance, like I want to tell the
story because I want someone to listen and be like, like,
it doesn't matter when you start, like you know, if
you put your obviously, I think I'm I have a
question for you. Do you think we all So we
were having this conversation with fool. I don't know what
(39:10):
the subject was exactly about, but I think it was
something like, are we all equally talented? Like from birth? Yeah,
I mean I would think that you come out with
the obviously there's like health deficiency. I think if you're
(39:30):
star Ledger Ledger stake ledgers, stay to basketball players, are
we all equally talented and people are just better just
because that built differently or that work harder. I think
it's the work harder because I think if you have
(39:51):
the motivation to get it right, to constantly work at it,
you can be better than someone that can get it
in like twenty hours less. But if you're putting in
sixty hours more than them, like I'm going to be
better than you, you may get it quicker. But if
I'm putting in more work, it's definitely work harder. No,
without a doubt. That's what we talk about with Tyrese.
Do you what do you think? Um, I'm not sure
(40:15):
because there's a lot of guys in the league that
pretty good, but I don't walk hard, and I've seen it.
I'm not exactly sure because you know, I look at
myself and you know, sometimes I ask myself and I
wouldn't get pissed off. And this is why I can
be a coach, because I'm like, if I'm able to
(40:36):
do something walking, everybody else do the same thing, right,
So I get I get extremely pissed off. But then again,
I also think about, you know, we might be equally talented,
but we don't have the same opportunities, right, Like, you know,
coming into the league, I don't know, Let's say, if
I would have gotten drafted to a winning team. Maybe
(41:00):
I don't know if I would have been as good
because I wouldn't have the opportunity to make mistakes and
get playing time and play through it and all that stuff.
Maybe I wouldn't have enough time. Maybe I would have
been a league I don't know. You know, I'm gonna
have to disagree on that one, because we'll even bring
(41:22):
it back to Kansas and then we'll move on from
this in Kansas, like you weren't given anything, but you
still managed to end up being a starter, still being
a guy that won them games and led them to
a special place. And you say, like if you got
drafted to a winning team, I think the thing that
separates you is you have the motivation in the drive
because you have so many people, like you have a
(41:43):
whole country behind you, Like it's not I think you've
put in your mind like it's not about you, it's
that little kid that looks up to me, that I
have to go out there and continue to be the
greatest I can be. And even now I'm sure that
you have a son, like you have a family now,
it's even more of a motivation. Is the dustle reason
why I'm play like we're on the plane and he
(42:04):
was like, I was you know, I was hurting. I
was so tired. He was like, but it was my
son's first game, so I knew I had to keep going.
Like when you hear stuff like that, it's like, how
can someone lose when that's like their motivation? And that's
why I think you are a special as you are,
because you're motivated by things where other people are like,
oh well if I make it, I make it, where
(42:24):
you're like you say it all the time, like you
need to make that because I like, I need to
make that. And that's that's like a motivation, like the
failing is not an option, And that's why I think
you've been so successful. So I don't know about the
opportunities because there might be someone that was given the
same opportunity, but you're going to go take the opportunity
where other people will will let it slip through their fingers.
I'm curious how it all ties together. You talk about
(42:47):
wanting to spend more time with your teammates off the
floor and be more of a leader and be more social.
You also say you've been playing your best basketball. How
much do you think Arthur has changed the way that
you just interact, because you've talked about how it's changed
the way that you play and the standard that you
hold yourself too. But how has it changed you in
(43:07):
terms of how you're part of a community and part
of a team. Obviously being a father, Like I said, um,
there's really the wisdom why. I mean, I was already
playing at a high level, but um, you know, since
I become one, I think he's uh, I don't know.
(43:30):
I really don't know how to explain it. He's change
the way I think and you know, the way I
do stuff. And I don't really know any explanations. I
just think it's because I, you know, first of all,
want to be over a mile or two my son
(43:53):
and you know, have him look up to me and
basically see, you know, what I've done as a man,
and then obviously as a basketball player, and uh, you know,
and I want to set the ball high, extremely high,
so you know, growing up he needs to be better
because that's the same way I used to think about
(44:14):
my dad. Uh, you know, when he was an handball
player and I used to go to his games and
I used to see how good it was and I
respected it. Was, and I was like, I want to
be like him, but now I'm at the level where
I think I'm better than him. I just you know,
obviously different sports and stuff, but that's the same way
(44:35):
I want my son to look at me. But I
don't really know. I think he's just um, you know,
the joy of you know, being one and having a
great family, having great people around me. Um, you know
my fiance and uh, you know everybody that should ports me.
(44:57):
I think I used the combination of a I think
that was well put. And you should see Joel when
he's facetiming his son. I've only seen it a couple
of times, and I always feel like I'm kind of
intruding on like a personal Joel moment. But the way
that you smile when you look at that kid, it's
unlike any other smile. And I've I've observed you for
(45:19):
many years now, and you have a different smile for him. Yeah.
I hate being on the world, like I can't wait
to go home to more night. Yeah that's good, Arthur.
All right, Well, moving on to our last segment, it
would be you know, we kind of ask every guest
(45:39):
if they had, you know, could give their younger self
some advice? What would that be? So if you could
tell of fourteen thirteen, twelve year old Joel Embiid some advice,
knowing what you know now, what would it be? Nothing?
(46:01):
I wouldn't want to change anything because I feel like
the way I am today is uh is well connected
to the way I was brought up and the way
I grew up and uh and the way I got here.
So uh yeah, if I really have, if I had
(46:25):
to give an advice to my younger self, yes, I
don't know. Just I wouldn't change anything really because I
feel like everything that I went through was for a reason. Uh,
you know, even you know those injuries those first two years,
and you know, losing my my little bather um, and
(46:49):
you know everything I happened in between. I think, you know,
it all happened for a reason. I think I think
that was well put experience as the best teacher. Yeah,
I like that. I like that. Well, Joel, thank you
for making time for the big nanc ery. We oh,
thanks for coming on. Of course we appreciate you. Yeah,
(47:14):
we know
Welcome to the Big Niang Theory. Let us my podcast.
Joel is a card shark. Danny gets swindled fashions. I
just like stuff that looks greatness, just breads greatness, and
the offit right in. Welcome back everyone to the Big
Niang Theory. Today we had an unbelievable guest. He had
(00:21):
a ton of insight on his life, his journey and
what motivates him and how he goes about attacking the
daily and challenges of his life. Joel Embiide and I
thoroughly enjoyed it. You know, I feel like I've grown
to have a good relationship with Joel, but it's just
something about him that, you know, when he gets down
and has a conversation, he learned so much about his life,
(00:47):
his journey, what motivates him, and it was a it
was a special episode today. I've been so lucky to
watch Joel over these last four seasons and sort of
watch him a sin into this MVP that he is.
But it's almost been more fun to watch how he's
grown off the court as his life has changed, the
(01:09):
way that he leads has changed, And so I thought
it was an absolute pleasure and a privilege to hear
him reflect on both the encourt and the off court stuff. Yeah. No,
he is some unreal insight and I just think the
way he thinks about things off the court is like
in a very unique way. But that makes Joel Joel,
(01:31):
and then he's an impressive person all around. His life
really is like a movie. It is. He even says it. So,
without further ado, here's Joel Embiid. Yeah, I know, welcome
everybody to another episode of The Big Niang Theory. I'm
(01:52):
George Niang along with my co host Lauren Rosen, and
we are super excited about this guest. Today. Joel Ebid
is in the building trust the process himself. Joel, thanks
for coming on today. Of course just for me right
because we have a special bond. But if I was
missing some shots, Joe, I'll be like, I'm not coming on. No.
(02:15):
But I mean before we really get into the meat
of it, I mean, you've been in the league now,
not nine nine eight years, eight years, eight years, all
of them in Philly, which we talked about on a
couple of our podcasts. That's like rare to have, you know,
being on one team. And I mean mean Laura we're
talking before. Your journey is so unique. I mean the
(02:37):
beginning it was struggling, you know, to get healthy and
then you know, literally having we talked about all the time,
you had like one hundred and twenty seven different teammates
and now you're looking at us being championship contenders. How
have you been able to stay in the mindset of
continuing to grow your career and later on in the podcast,
(02:58):
we'll get about your off the court stuff and growing
up as like a man, but like continue to grow
and get better and embrace these new challenges because I mean,
Lord knows you could have you know, crumbled early on
with all the things that were going on. I mean,
Philly is a tough city to you know, have all
those losing seasons and then for you to just continue
to show up every day and bring this franchise to
(03:20):
where it is now, I'm not sure exactly. I think
he's just about I've always been competitive, obviously starting to
play basketball so late. But you know, in all the
all the sports that that I was part of or
that I played, UM doesn't matter what I did, I
was always competitive and and I love challenges. UM, So
(03:43):
you know, when I started playing. Obviously it adn't especially
in the NBA. He didn't get off to a good start.
You know, I had to fight through, you know, whether
it was Andrewis or the loss of my brother or
you know, all the negative stuff that was going on
around me. The tape too, because at that time till
the team was not in a good stage. It was
(04:06):
a bunch of losing. It was extremely frustrating, but I
kind of really took it upon myself until, you know,
want to be I wouldn't say the savior, but kind
of like I want to be the guy that kind
of puts fill it back to where I feel it
(04:27):
is supposed to be. Because when you talk about whether
it's the previous seasons you talk about, you know, back
in the day, I wasn't watching, but you know the
stories that I hear from, you know, whether it was
AI and you know the movement, you know, I just
attracted everything, everybody the whole ward. Then it was all
(04:48):
about the Saxes. So I kind of wanted to be
the first guy to put fill it back to where
he used to be. But at times it was tough.
It was extreme tough. But I think my background, the
way I was Race helped me navigate through all these situations.
(05:09):
You know, it was tough growing up the way I
was race. You know, I was my mom my dad,
you know that were always hard on me. So I
think that helped me a lot. When you did JJ's
podcast last week, The Old Man in the Three, something
that stood out to me was you talked about going
to Kansas and wanting to get a job and make
(05:29):
money to support your family in Cameroon. Fast forward and
instead of doing that, you end up in the NBA. Yeah,
you're fighting for MVP, which we're going to talk about,
but more than that, you're not just supporting the people
you set out to support. You're supporting hundreds of families
in Philadelphia, really putting down roots in different communities, supporting
(05:50):
people you don't even know. How does it feel to
know what your goal was and reflect on what you're
actually doing instead? Feels great? I mean the goal coming
coming to the US, Uh. You know, I've said it
so many times and I still It's not because I
want any credit. It's more about wanting to be kind
(06:13):
of like, I don't know how to explain it. I
want people to believe in themselves when I when I
always mentioned this when I always said that, you know,
starting to play basketball eleven years ago, I don't know
where you know, a sixteen years old like you know,
you know, think about you know, being not being from
here and coming here and not knowing the language is
(06:36):
not known everybody, and like I just want people to
kind of understand that anything is possible, that you know,
if you really want to put your mind up to
do something, that you can achieve it. And you know,
going back to your coming uh, you know, really coming
to the US, it was more about, Okay, I'm just
(06:58):
gonna use the supportunity to try to get a degree
because at the time, I'm like, I just started playing basketball.
I don't believe in myself. There's no chance I'm gonna
make it to the league. So you know, I get
an opportunity to get free education. So I'm like, well,
you know, a degree in America is extremely important. If
I go back to Cameroon, I'm gonna make a lot
(07:20):
of money, like just using that degree and found a
really great job because of the education that I got
in America. So that's the way I was thinking. And
you know, fast forward, you know, I'm lucky and blessed
to be in this situation where you know, God gave
me the talent and I'm just taking the advantage of
(07:43):
it and just walking hard every single day. But you know,
you know, since I've been in the league, that was
always one of the main goals for me to try
to help as many people as I can. Obviously, you
can't help everybody, and I wish a lot of people,
especially the wealthy, extremely wealthy people, because there's so much
(08:07):
money in this world. Then I feel like if everybody
just came together and you know, put a lot of money,
I feel like it could help a lot of people,
like you could solve a lot of a lot of
issues in the whole world. But that's always been my
mindset to try to help as many people as I can,
(08:28):
especially because I lived through it, I saw it growing up.
So yeah, I mean, just to hear you, like when
Lauren told me that you talked about that on the
Old Man in the Three, just to hear that, like,
just how humble you are for everything that you have
going on, and the crazy part is the achievements that
(08:49):
you've had. You're like, I don't want to say you're
the only superstar that doesn't like boast about those things,
but like you really have to dig to find stuff
about you. Like I think the craziest part is, I'm
going to go back to the basketball round, but like
how much scrutiny you've taken for whether it was early
in your career not being able to do this, or
you're only a little post player, you're only this, And
(09:09):
it's like it just seems like every challenge that comes
your way, you achieveven and you get there. Like we
talked about earlier, you're gonna you're gonna make it work,
but you don't speak about it. You never you never
speak about it. Like another thing is people this year
were like, can Joel Embiid stay healthy enough to play
in that many games? And I don't know how many
games are you playing, but there's not too many games
(09:30):
where you're that was the case last year. That's why
I'm made a comment to the other day ball, you know,
talking about d MVP A ball. I don't know what
I have to do at this point because last year,
when if you think about it, it was you didn't
play enough games. And then I was like, Okay, shure,
I'm gonna come back this year I'm gonna, you know,
(09:53):
put that argument aside and all that stuff. And I
played enough games. So that's why I'm like, Okay, what
else do I have to do and not? And it's okay.
I think I'm humble, but a lot of people probably
don't think I am because I'm argue. But that's just
me being competitive because I'm a basketball player. Like you know,
(10:14):
as I started realizing what type of talent I had,
you know, I'm extremely competitive. I want to be the best,
and nowadays, he's unfortunate that, you know, to be you know,
I want to. I want to be wearing top five,
top ten, the best player ever. Buddy's unfortunate that nowadays
(10:36):
to be up there, you gotta you know, you gotta
show awards. You know, I'm in the MVPs, you have
Defensive Player of the Year. I'm any championships you have.
So like that's why, to me is also important because
like that's my that's my nature. I'm competitive. I want
to I want to be there, and I know that,
(10:57):
oh if that's a cartrayer to be up there, then
I want to have something to show full. So like
he's almost like, well, just tell me what I had
to do next year, like, hey, like it doesn't matter,
Like I don't care if I win it or that
if I don't, just tell me what I had to
do next year. Trust me, I'm gonna come back and
(11:21):
do it. And if you want to put on another crostraate,
well I'm gonna come back to follow You're gonna do
it again. Right, And you look at this year like
because you look how they say they said that last year,
and then you look at this year you have to
come back. And I don't know if we've ever really
got to talk about, but the mindset that you had
to come into this year with and I don't want
to get two in depth with it because you know
(11:41):
it's a thing in the past, but you had to
come in knowing whatever was happening with our roster before that,
that you were going to have a boatload of the minutes,
the points, the pressure to make this team run. And
you know, whether that was playing games or scorings, are
doing things down the stretch or getting guys shots. You
(12:05):
answered the bell on that. So how did you mentally
prepare yourself to get ready for that type of challenge
going into the year, Because nobody understands it because when
you think about it, I mean, missing that much money
off a roster is significant and we had to go
a long period of time to do that. But I
don't know what the exact numbers are. I know we
(12:25):
were top four in the East while that was all
happening to yeah, top three, yeah yeah. Joel always knows
exactly what the numbers were at any given time, like like,
what is your mindset going? And be like all right,
like we had a heartbreaking loss, Like how am I
going to get myself mentally prepared to one? Like now
you know all the attentions on you, and now you know, like, okay,
(12:48):
all the attentions on me. How can I get Tyres shots?
When Seth is here? How can I get him shots?
How can I get shaped George? How can I get
these other guy's shots. We're still making sure that you
can still do what you have to do. I think
goes back to the conversation that me Andrew had in
the summer, you know, and he's always mentioned it in
the past. I've in the past, I've always relied on
(13:13):
everybody to try to be successful. And then he always
try to put it in my mind and was like,
can you carry your team. Can you do whatever's necessary too,
you know, make sure you win games. That doesn't mean
just go on points, whether it's defense, playmaking, and everything
on the basketball floor. So you know, going into the season,
(13:35):
obviously with all the drama that we had, you know,
I took I took on that challenge because that's why
I liked Like he told me it was like can
you do it? And then he was like, I think
you can do it, but I don't think you believe it.
So I was like, Okay, I'm gonna show you. So
we started up the season, I think we were eight
and two and everything was going well, and then obviously
(13:59):
COVID happen, and then you know, I got it, and
then a bunch of us had it, and by the
time we all came back, we were what ten seth
or whatever, like at some point we were like sixteen
and sixteen, and you know, really my mom said, you know,
just coming in is and we I like to joke
(14:19):
about it, and you know, I always tell you guys
that I don't want to pass it, but you know
it's not true because I make the vie play anytime.
Like if Obviously my mom set is like I'm not
gonna go out there and get you ten assists. I
just not me. I want to score the ball. I
want to put the ball in the basket. But then again,
(14:40):
at the same time, I also want to make the
vi play if I get double. At times, I might
shoot over the double team just because you know, I
feel like I can't make that shot. But most of
the time I'm also gonna, you know, make that play
and all that stuff. And what I've learned is that
you know, I can't win alone and I need my teammates.
So over the game, I you know, I got to
(15:02):
pick and choose my spots where you know I can't
be as aggressive as I can, and you know, also
make sure that I get everybody involved because you know,
at some point he's gonna come back and help me,
whether it's at the end of the game and all
that stuff. So really, going into the season without the
drama that we had, you know, my mindset was just
(15:23):
to you know, I basically told myself, I was like,
I'm just gonna come in. First of all, it was
to be a better leader than I've been in the past.
And you know, you you you didn't see me in
the past but I used to be kind of like isolated, like, yeah,
I didn't want to hang out and and I just
(15:43):
you know, on the road, I just wanted to be
in my room chilling all the time, playing video games
and all that stuff. And uh, this year, I just
felt like, you know, with everything I was going on,
I just wanted to come in and kind of bring everybody,
bring everybody together in my own way, not like always
stalking yelling. I know that's all about we got that.
(16:06):
Yeah that's all I'm saying. But that's that's that's not me,
But in my own way, try to bring everybody together.
And I think you know what made it easies is
also that everybody had the same mindset. You know, we
kind of like, yeah, we kind of enjoy the whole drama,
Like we kind of enjoy the moment. Like we we
(16:29):
felt like, you know what, you know, if you with
us fun, if you don't want to be with us,
it is whatever. Like we just felt like, you know,
we just gonna go out then, you know, just have
fun and play with each other and try to win
every single game. You talk about wanting to have fun,
And I think that that's an interesting in my time
with you that I've charted your willingness to let yourself
(16:51):
have fun, because you went through a phase there where
you're like, I'm not gonna have any distractions, I'm not
gonna be on Twitter, I'm not gonna have fun. I'm
taking the joy out. And now you're willing to sort
of add the joy back in. And I think that
that was really apparent early in the season when you
guys decided to shut out the distractions and win for
yourselves and for each other and have a good time.
Which leads me to something that George doesn't know that
I'm going to ask you about. We've talked about this
(17:13):
quote a couple of times on the show, and I
want you to just read it to him and then
just reflect sort of on how you feel now. Is
this the one way he tells me that I suck?
I used to think I used to think he sucked. Honestly, Obviously,
on this seam, he's doing way more than shooting threas.
What I'm in Presswood is is a competitor. It brings
(17:36):
so much joy to all of us all and off
the court. I'm just glad I have him. That was
a lie, but I was just saying that the way
to make a sappy man. We really don't even honestly,
And what I told George after after you said that,
because I was early in the season, that was in November,
and eventually you guys really didn't Yeah, it was his one, right,
(17:57):
you guys didn't really know each other, and George wasn't
really sure how to feel about it. And I said,
if Joel is willing to poke fun at you this soon,
it means that he really likes if you're acting like
I'm sensitive. I don't care what Joel says about me, man, right,
I don't. I don't care at all. This is the
big kne You don't. You don't embarrass me on my podcast.
But Joel tell me why, because it is clear that
(18:19):
you've enjoyed playing with George. Oh man, I think like
I always joke him on with him. You know, he's
always I guess the happy one him meant how rays
always you know, always talking, sometimes talking for no reason,
talking too loud, and when he's not talking like he
(18:40):
tell you like last night. Actually, you know, I'm always
like poking fun out of him and basic good time,
that he's too quiet and all that stuff. Because you
know on any to tell you he's been on our
three teams. Yeah, yeah, he's been on thweet teams. Here
tell you like, like every team needs that top of guy.
(19:01):
And I think that's part of the reason why this
year I'm more open to just be around everybody because
in the past it was like, uh yeah, like guys
were cool and all that stuff, but it wasn't like
there wasn't like someone. I was always uplifting everybody and
(19:21):
you know, always try to bring everybody together, make people smile.
And I guess that simple shake and Matisa the exact
same thing. Because George is who he is, you guys
get to be who you are more naturally for sure. Yeah,
I think I think that's the key. And we never
had that in the past. Uh no disrespect to whoever
has been in Philly with me, but it just hasn't
(19:45):
been the same. And you know, I always go back
to also the drama. The drama I think made us
extremely close. I think he was a sourceful. I think
we enjoyed it. No one was saying no, but it
was like motivation for us to I proved to people
because they were like, if such and such doesn't come
back like they have no chance. It was like it
(20:06):
was like it was it was. It was basically like okay,
like people probably thought that we wein't gonna be as
good and all that stuff, but I've always believe in
myself that you know, as long as I'm on the
basketball floor, we have a chance to win. So to
me and to all of us, he was motivation to
be like yo, like we saw this season eight and
(20:28):
two before all the COVID stuff happened, So from that time,
it was already like, yeah, it doesn't matter what's happening. Um,
you know, if whoever wants to come back, it's welcome.
If that dumb, that's the problem. Uh. And if we
trade for somebody, they're also welcome. But we're gonna do
(20:50):
with what we have and we're gonna succeed. So you
did end up getting somebody new and a couple of
nights ago, James, I don't even know if you know
this made a very convincing case for you to be VP,
having been an MVP himself. You guys have only known
each other for a couple of weeks, but what does
it mean to you to know that someone who's won
this award before who's one of the greatest to ever
play this game, has now sort of thrown himself behind you.
(21:13):
He feels like you should win MVP, but b wants
to do whatever he can to make that happen. That's
he's been. He's been great. Uh it's funny. Uh, you know,
like and you know the coming out that you just
worried about him. I know, I knew it was a
good guy, but he's always better when you actually get
to live it. And you know, we've all heard, you know,
(21:37):
stories about players in the league and all that stuff.
So yeah, so I went, so when you actually get
to be of the personing like someone that you heard
something about, and it's completely different than you know, what
you heard, is almost like this, like this is crazy.
(21:57):
So like with James or anybody that's new on the
team or whatever, I think, you know, especially James, like
he's been. He's been great, you know, just the energy
to joy and you know, going back to the MVP talks,
like he just he's just he's just I think he's
just been doing whatever it's necessary to make sure that
(22:17):
I get it. Uh, And you know that's you know,
I appreciate it a lot because he doesn't have to.
He could He could have come in here and be like,
you know what, like you know, uh, you know, I've
been the best player on the team and uh, you
know I want MVP. And he could have come in
here and try to, you know, impose himself and be
(22:40):
like it's me and you all like it's you or me,
But he's coming and just empowered all of us to
make sure that we all in this together. No, and
like even Tyrese and I think the best thing that
you and James offers the basketball conversations. Like I think
people don't given credit to those two James and Joel
(23:02):
is how like smart they are. Like I've said, James
is a basketball savant. But when you watch Joel and
where the ball goes, like everything is calculated and there's
no like randomness, there's no like everything is done for
a reason. And some people are like, well, why is
he dribbling over there? And then you ask him and
he's like, well, because in my mind I wanted to
(23:22):
move this guy because it's easier when I do this.
And I don't think people get enough credit, give him
enough credit for that. But I think the best part
about James coming alongside him is that they're both basketball savants.
So just the conversation that they're having where it's like, hey, Tyrese,
why don't you look at this, or Tobias look at this,
or George look at this while they're talking about it,
whether we're playing cards or eating you know, it's just
(23:45):
the conversation that they're having that's uplifting everyone else's knowledge.
Because I like to think I'm pretty smart on the basketball,
you know, intellectual level, but like when you hear them talk,
it's like I want to be like a sponge and
soak all into that. I think James has been great
for everybody. He's been great for Joel, but he's been
great for this team, especially when Joel talks about, you know, uplifting.
(24:08):
I know we're kind of getting off the MVP topic,
but before James got here, Joel was uplifting us to
a point to where it was like, Okay, now we
got another jolt, and I think that's what we need,
you know, moving forward, going into the playoffs. You talk
about how smart Joel is, and I don't play with you,
so I don't see the basketball side. But I've always
(24:29):
been so impressed with the way that you handle media
and the way that you can own a room, and
how strategic you are with your answers. And then we
learn more about how much film you study and the
way that you pick apart the game. And I listen
to the guys every time we do an episode talk
about how smart you are. And so I've seen it
from my perspective. George has seen it from his perspective.
At what point in your life growing up did you realize, Okay,
(24:53):
I'm really smart. I know how to handle situations. You
talk about the education piece, wanting to go after an education.
At what point in your life did you realize that
you could really use how apt you are mentally to
get what you want. I don't know. It was probably
after I kicked his ass. Was that I was Oh honestly,
(25:14):
I don't know. Were you a smart kid? Like what
do your parents say about you? Oh? It was pretty school.
I was pretty good in school. Um already more like
hard working? Did you until I hate proberty? You know,
I started acting a little crazy. Okay, tell us more,
what does that mean? Started missing classes and stuff. And
I used to get beat up all the time, but
(25:36):
you know, like physically beat up by other kids. No,
my mom, I was imaginating you because you must have
been a really big kid. I'm like, I'm not worried
about you with other kids on the playground. I was,
I was soft going off, I was. I was. I
was a soft kid. But people were scared on me
obviously just because of your size. I guess. Yeah, but
(26:00):
think goes back to uh I was raised. You know,
we were the way we were race. We were always
on the schedule. Like he was all about school. You know,
going to school, and you know when you come back,
you know, take a shot, you had to take a
nap and then whatever, eat, take a nap, and then
you wake up. You got to study for a son
(26:20):
amount of hours and then you get to hang out
for thirty minutes and then you freaking go to slip.
It's like it was like that, this was my mom. Yeah.
And then in the weekends it was about like just
chilling studying, chilling studying, like it was That's the way
we were raised. So it was always about school. So
(26:41):
but I always had good notes. But going back to
your question, I don't know exactly, but when he comes
to basketball, I think y'all goes back to being competitive
and wanting everything right, wanting to which that's that next level,
wanting to which a level that I want to get to,
(27:01):
you know, being open about everything, listening to everything, taking
everything in and basically figuring, now you know what's good
and what's not. And you know, me Andrew, we watch
We watched so much film after every game. He sends
me a clip, a voiceover with all the clips of
what I should have done, what I should have done better.
(27:22):
We have conversation after every single game that we play,
every single the next day, that's what we do. And
we watched so much filming between from other guys and
all that stuff. So I think, like I was actually
saying in a postgame interview during the game, I was
talking to a coach, Lloyd Pace, you used to be
the assistant here, and I was basically telling him I
(27:44):
was like, a double team ain't gonna walk because that's
the same double team that they used to try to
do when it was a coach for Atlanta, like hard
up Hard Double basically watched Toronto dusting me and to
try to get the ball out of my hand. So
during the game, I was just talking so much trashing them.
I was like I've seen everything. It doesn't matter what
(28:05):
you do. I got connors to everything. It doesn't matter
if you're signed a double troop of teams, I'm gonna
tell George you freaking stay there, and he's gonna get
a wad uper shot. So I'm gonna get guys to
be in different positions, or I'm just gonna get a deposition,
or I'm just gonna get to the now. What he's
gonna be hard or double? And if you want to
(28:27):
double from the now and now, I see the whole court,
and I can make easy passes. And so that I
was basically talking trash from them. I think I'm not
exactly sure. I think I don't know if it's natural
or whatever. I think it's just it's just the way
it is. I guess, are you guys the two best
trash talkers on the team. I don't talk trash. You know,
(28:52):
we talk, we talk trash on it today. I don't know.
I mean, I obviously it's first survival tactics, so you
know what I mean. But you know, I think Joel's
are subtle and pretty funny, you know, like like telling
something like what are you gonna do? Like you can't
stop me. You know, just little things like that where
it's not like outwardly like where the fans can see it,
(29:14):
but it's letting. It's letting you know that he knows
that you're there. But you're not gonna do anything that
probably gets under people's skin, like if you're casual about it.
Oh man, I'm trying to think back because there was
a time. I give you an example, so yesterday after
the game, and I like to get on guys about this.
I'm never asked for a double team in my life,
so every single guy that I play against, I'm always like, well, like,
(29:38):
you're a freaking man, so be a man, Like if
you don't need a double team, you know, to go
tell your coach you can go me one on one.
But also that's also a strategy for me so that
I actually feel like, oh my god, such a man.
I'm such a man. I don't need help or whatever,
like let me go play one on one. Like, but
I'm sorry to say, I've had enough experience to feel like,
(30:03):
you know, if you're gonna play me one on one
is a recipe for disaster. So like, but I'm always
trying to get on guys like yesterday after the game,
I'm talking to the rookie, I'm like, you don't need
no help, Like you've better talk to your coach like yo,
like you a man, like be a man about it,
like I never asked. And then coach pierces right there,
I'm like, coach, if I ever asked for a double
(30:25):
to me in my life, it's like nah. And then
I'm talking to the rookie. I'm like, then you must
be soft. Then if you need a second or third
guy to be guarding me or whatever, Oh my god.
But it's never personal, Like I'm like, I never go
over the line. And to me, the game of basketball
is all about having fun, you know. Like I said,
(30:47):
I'm extremely serious about it, and you know, I got
goals to where I need to be by the by
the time I'm done. But at the end of the day,
it's never is not that personal. There's a lot that
I can't control. Is Joel the best player you've ever
played with? You know? I think I've I've said, no,
(31:09):
you play with DeAndre King. No, I play with Donovan Mitchell.
So yeah you're number two? Yeah, no, I'm number three.
DeAndre King. Oh my god, No, I mean, we don't
have to get into us, but Joel obviously is uh
no Monte Moris. Yeah, he's he's really he's better. He
could go full, he could guard you one on one. Well,
I played with Wayne Selden, so he's better than Joel
(31:31):
mb No. But uh, I think Joel is is the
most unique player that you know, I've ever played with.
I mean, I know, there's just so many different fascests
to his game. And like I talked about it early on,
it's like early on his early on his career, he
was a back to the basket player. And then everyone
knows in basketball it's so easy to double a big
(31:52):
man that only plays with their back to the basket.
They have to give the ball up. If the double
teams waiting there, it's tough to score and you kind
of neutralize their effectiveness. Then he starts stepping out and
making mid range jumpers. Now he's doing it off the dribble.
And when you have a big guy at his size
that can score at all three levels, it makes it
extremely hard to guard. And I think the most impressive
thing that you've done. And I'm done giving you compliments
(32:13):
at this because I don't really like you, um, is
that you've picked your points of went to attack and
went to let the defense think you're going to attack
and pass. And I think once you once you've gotten
to that point, that's what's taking you to this next
beneficial exactly knows what I'm gonna pass the ball. I'm not.
(32:36):
I'm not leaving, Joel, So can we get a lifetime deal?
Enough about this? But wish I wish I was the gaol.
Keep you keep George, I keep George, um, Joel. I
promised you when we were talking about getting you on
the show that we could talk a little bit about
Formula one. I know you're a big fan. Oh my god,
(32:58):
George knows nothing about Formula one. So what I thought
would be fun is if you and I pitch him
on why he would enjoy Formula one, Like I think
it might be the most entertaining sport in the world.
How do you even pitch somebody on Formula one? Do
you have? Do you like costs? Yeah? Like cars, like
racing costs. I feel like that's very dangerous. It is dangerous.
(33:23):
That's why he's Do you like get a thrill watching it?
Like seeing them? Super fun? YEA like one that go
crazy and you know, let's start finding each other. I'm like,
I'm on my TV. Like, but then again, like you
can't take it for granted, because like what they do
is insane, Like you know, at any point you know
(33:44):
that big I don't know, over to like close to
two hundred miles an hour right is where it tops out.
It's the fastest racing cars two hundred. But I don't know,
it's just the thrill of it. It's just I don't
know how that's playing. I don't, I can't. I don't
know how to pitch somebody on Formula again, So like
do you root for like a team or is there
(34:05):
just individuals? Growing up, I used to like my favorite
team is fer Our, okay, and I'm actually happy that
they're doing a great job this year and they have
done I have an opportunity to win the championship this year.
Um two it's teams have two drivers, ten teams two
(34:26):
drivers teams, so for they're doing good this year. But
over the years, there's been one guy that has dominated
the field. Like in Formula one is like there's usually
like two cars that are the best and that everybody
else have no chance. This year is a little different.
It feels like there's like three or four teams, you know,
(34:48):
that might have a chance to win the championship, but
over the years there's one guy, Lewis Hamilton, that that's
been dominant in the field. So last year I was
rooting against see because, like, you know, he's won like
seven times and I'm like, he's always the same person,
Like there needs to be something like someone you So
(35:11):
that's why I was rooting for And I like Lewis,
I'm a big fan, but I just felt like there's like,
for the sake of the sport, they needed to be
someone else. That's just because you love chaos. Yeah, but
that's fun though, Actually you don't. You don't actually love Max.
(35:32):
You just wanted someone else to win because you love chaos.
I mean that's fun. I mean it's like exactly who.
So Max Verstappen won his first World Championship last year. Yeah,
that's why he treated like the step and that's why
during the World Championship we were on the road right, Yeah,
just no, I was home because remember you sent to
(35:54):
put the video of of it like in Twitter or something,
wasn't it. Yeah, we were we were at home. We
were at home, but you gave me it was fund
was crazy the way everything happened, So it's also super unfair.
That's another reason why I think you might like it,
because every team has just like grossly different budgets, but
they're all held to the exact same standard, so they
(36:15):
all have to raise all the same tracks they and
if you win, you're given more money for the next season.
So the good teams keep getting richer and richer and richer,
and the bad teams stay bad. Like it's super unfair.
Every track is different, Like there's so much charity. Basic
could have been good. You gotta have like a billionaire
investor that just comes in and just throws a bunch
(36:36):
of money. And then half of the drivers are like
the kids, not half, but a large chunk of the
drivers are children of those investors. So there's some really
good drivers that will never drive in Formula One because
a lot of seats are taken up by paid drivers.
And then I and those kids good, they're just on
that because our dad father is a billionaire and they
(36:57):
invested in the in the team, and that's just happened.
To have a sit on the But it is not
a fast sport, like there's always over. Over the last
what eight nine years or whatever, there's only been one
team that has been good. And that's why last year
was so exciting because he was like, finally someone different,
(37:17):
someone finally beat them, like someone finally bad my cities,
Like finally is over. So that's why I was happy.
But for our this year is that this is their year.
All right, I'm gonna go get me the team for
sweatshirt for Formula one. And you grew up watching too, right,
like this has always been part of your life, watch sports,
going up everything, soccer Real Madrid. I know that. But
(37:42):
how old were you when you first watched basketball? Oh?
Oh it's probably fourteen. You had never even watched it before. No,
that's crazy. So how old were you when you started playing?
It's probably like six years old. But now you're making
me look bad for twenty two years. Joel has been
playing for eleven years. Yeah, you've been playing basketball double
(38:04):
as long as Joel and you're the same age. Yeah,
I'm getting really uncomfortable. Sorry, okay, but we're talking about someone.
I know. It's it's it's impressive. I would say it's impressive.
I know to me it's like the way I see
it is like like I mentioned in the beginning, like
it's cool, but like I wanted to be a source
(38:24):
of motivation for everybody coming up, especially people from Africa,
because we don't have diesel portunities and we don't have
you know, the money or the budget though you know,
these facilities and to be able to get better and
learn and compete with the rest of the world. So
(38:47):
to me, I want it like every single time that
I get the chance, like I want to tell the
story because I want someone to listen and be like, like,
it doesn't matter when you start, like you know, if
you put your obviously, I think I'm I have a
question for you. Do you think we all So we
were having this conversation with fool. I don't know what
(39:10):
the subject was exactly about, but I think it was
something like, are we all equally talented? Like from birth? Yeah,
I mean I would think that you come out with
the obviously there's like health deficiency. I think if you're
(39:30):
star Ledger Ledger stake ledgers, stay to basketball players, are
we all equally talented and people are just better just
because that built differently or that work harder. I think
it's the work harder because I think if you have
(39:51):
the motivation to get it right, to constantly work at it,
you can be better than someone that can get it
in like twenty hours less. But if you're putting in
sixty hours more than them, like I'm going to be
better than you, you may get it quicker. But if
I'm putting in more work, it's definitely work harder. No,
without a doubt. That's what we talk about with Tyrese.
Do you what do you think? Um, I'm not sure
(40:15):
because there's a lot of guys in the league that
pretty good, but I don't walk hard, and I've seen it.
I'm not exactly sure because you know, I look at
myself and you know, sometimes I ask myself and I
wouldn't get pissed off. And this is why I can
be a coach, because I'm like, if I'm able to
(40:36):
do something walking, everybody else do the same thing, right,
So I get I get extremely pissed off. But then again,
I also think about, you know, we might be equally talented,
but we don't have the same opportunities, right, Like, you know,
coming into the league, I don't know, Let's say, if
I would have gotten drafted to a winning team. Maybe
(41:00):
I don't know if I would have been as good
because I wouldn't have the opportunity to make mistakes and
get playing time and play through it and all that stuff.
Maybe I wouldn't have enough time. Maybe I would have
been a league I don't know. You know, I'm gonna
have to disagree on that one, because we'll even bring
(41:22):
it back to Kansas and then we'll move on from
this in Kansas, like you weren't given anything, but you
still managed to end up being a starter, still being
a guy that won them games and led them to
a special place. And you say, like if you got
drafted to a winning team, I think the thing that
separates you is you have the motivation in the drive
because you have so many people, like you have a
(41:43):
whole country behind you, Like it's not I think you've
put in your mind like it's not about you, it's
that little kid that looks up to me, that I
have to go out there and continue to be the
greatest I can be. And even now I'm sure that
you have a son, like you have a family now,
it's even more of a motivation. Is the dustle reason
why I'm play like we're on the plane and he
(42:04):
was like, I was you know, I was hurting. I
was so tired. He was like, but it was my
son's first game, so I knew I had to keep going.
Like when you hear stuff like that, it's like, how
can someone lose when that's like their motivation? And that's
why I think you are a special as you are,
because you're motivated by things where other people are like,
oh well if I make it, I make it, where
(42:24):
you're like you say it all the time, like you
need to make that because I like, I need to
make that. And that's that's like a motivation, like the
failing is not an option, And that's why I think
you've been so successful. So I don't know about the
opportunities because there might be someone that was given the
same opportunity, but you're going to go take the opportunity
where other people will will let it slip through their fingers.
I'm curious how it all ties together. You talk about
(42:47):
wanting to spend more time with your teammates off the
floor and be more of a leader and be more social.
You also say you've been playing your best basketball. How
much do you think Arthur has changed the way that
you just interact, because you've talked about how it's changed
the way that you play and the standard that you
hold yourself too. But how has it changed you in
(43:07):
terms of how you're part of a community and part
of a team. Obviously being a father, Like I said, um,
there's really the wisdom why. I mean, I was already
playing at a high level, but um, you know, since
I become one, I think he's uh, I don't know.
(43:30):
I really don't know how to explain it. He's change
the way I think and you know, the way I
do stuff. And I don't really know any explanations. I
just think it's because I, you know, first of all,
want to be over a mile or two my son
(43:53):
and you know, have him look up to me and
basically see, you know, what I've done as a man,
and then obviously as a basketball player, and uh, you know,
and I want to set the ball high, extremely high,
so you know, growing up he needs to be better
because that's the same way I used to think about
(44:14):
my dad. Uh, you know, when he was an handball
player and I used to go to his games and
I used to see how good it was and I
respected it. Was, and I was like, I want to
be like him, but now I'm at the level where
I think I'm better than him. I just you know,
obviously different sports and stuff, but that's the same way
(44:35):
I want my son to look at me. But I
don't really know. I think he's just um, you know,
the joy of you know, being one and having a
great family, having great people around me. Um, you know
my fiance and uh, you know everybody that should ports me.
(44:57):
I think I used the combination of a I think
that was well put. And you should see Joel when
he's facetiming his son. I've only seen it a couple
of times, and I always feel like I'm kind of
intruding on like a personal Joel moment. But the way
that you smile when you look at that kid, it's
unlike any other smile. And I've I've observed you for
(45:19):
many years now, and you have a different smile for him. Yeah.
I hate being on the world, like I can't wait
to go home to more night. Yeah that's good, Arthur.
All right, Well, moving on to our last segment, it
would be you know, we kind of ask every guest
(45:39):
if they had, you know, could give their younger self
some advice? What would that be? So if you could
tell of fourteen thirteen, twelve year old Joel Embiid some advice,
knowing what you know now, what would it be? Nothing?
(46:01):
I wouldn't want to change anything because I feel like
the way I am today is uh is well connected
to the way I was brought up and the way
I grew up and uh and the way I got here.
So uh yeah, if I really have, if I had
(46:25):
to give an advice to my younger self, yes, I
don't know. Just I wouldn't change anything really because I
feel like everything that I went through was for a reason. Uh,
you know, even you know those injuries those first two years,
and you know, losing my my little bather um, and
(46:49):
you know everything I happened in between. I think, you know,
it all happened for a reason. I think I think
that was well put experience as the best teacher. Yeah,
I like that. I like that. Well, Joel, thank you
for making time for the big nanc ery. We oh,
thanks for coming on. Of course we appreciate you. Yeah,
(47:14):
we know
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