Joel Embiid at the Olympics: That'll Do
Embiid's Team USA run was ultimately neither a total success or an outright disaster. We'll take it, I suppose.
I felt a little bad not writing something after Team USA's Semifinal game against Serbia. After all, it was a huge moment of vindication for Joel Embiid in these Olympics: Three games after picking up a DNP - CD against South Sudan that almost felt merciful given how much he'd been struggling to find his role on Team USA, he scored 19 points on 8-11 shooting, including three buckets in a row in the fourth quarter when the team desperately needed the offense to help overcome their late double-digit deficit. In the post-game team huddle, Old Man LeBron James specifically shouted Joel and Steph Curry as the dudes who bailed the team out -- and then Jo celebrated by walking the runway DX style, with Anthony Edwards as his one-man cheering section. It felt like an iconic and potentially pivotal performance not just for Embiid's Olympics run, but perhaps his entire career. It was a performance that demanded commemoration.
But it also felt like it was still too early to write about it -- not with yesterday's Gold medal game still to come. After all, narratives are extremely game-to-game in single-elimination tournament play, and the tenor of Embiid's play in the finals would certainly end up retroactively reflecting on his performance in the semis. As good as he was against Serbia, it was still a fairly flawed Embiid game: He was awful on the boards in the fourth quarter, had a couple bad turnovers (though one of those whistles was obvious bullshit), and continued to look a step slow on defense. If those problems were amplified in the finals -- and especially if Embiid was a negative in his minutes, and especially if he got roundly outplayed by Anthony Davis and/or Bam Adebayo, and ESPECIALLY if the team ended up losing the game -- it could've ultimately superseded his semifinals successes, and still made Joel's Olympics run the catastrophe I'd long feared it would end up being for him.
So is that what happened in yesterday's game? Well, as Rebecca DeMornay might say, yes...... no....... maybe? As a legacy game, it was a roundly inconclusive performance -- which might be disappointing both for haters looking for this to be the final word on Embiid's loseriness and for fans who hoped to be crotch-chopping alongside him all the way back across the Atlantic. But ultimately, it's fair enough, and good enough for what we most wanted for Joel in these Olympics.
Of course, the game started off looking like it had the potential for outright disaster. Nearly everything that could've gone wrong for Embiid during his first quarter run did: He missed shots, he turned the ball over, he was a little laggy on both sides of the ball, and he had at least two Oh Well Surely He'll Grab This Rebound opportunities easily wrested away from him. Worst of all, Team France anchor Victor Wembanyama -- victim of Embiid's famous 70-point performance about half a year earlier -- absolutely dominated him throughout the early run, making him look downright old a couple times as he dipsy-dooed past on him on offense. As he was subbed out halfway through the first and did not return before halftime, you just hoped that Joel would get an opportunity to make up for his slow-in-all-ways start to the game in the second half.
And that's basically what happened. Embiid didn't come out with a dominant run like he had late in the semis, but he got down low and got a couple early fouls -- scoring all four of his points at the line -- was more competitive as a rebounder and as a screener and generally helped the offense get back in its groove. More importantly, he stood up tall on defense against both Wembanyama and longtime quasi-rival Rudy Gobert, absolutely stoning Wemby on one possession, interrupting several lob attempts and interior passes on others, and all but... I dunno, do people still say teabagging? Is that OK?... Gobert in one particularly memorable stand. When he checked out of the game 2/3 of the way through the third, he had basically done just enough to wash the bad taste of the first quarter out of fans' mouths, and not a lot more. If that was it from Embiid in that game -- and unsurprisingly, it was, as coach Steve Kerr again went with Davis or Adebayo the rest of the way -- it felt like he had broken even for the day.
Really, the truest thing you could say about Embiid's performance in the finals is that it did not particularly matter. During his bad stretch yesterday, his teammates were hot enough that he still checked out +2 during his opening run; during his good stretch, they scuffled a little more, and he only left it +1. So he ended his performance +3 for the day, after playing about a little less than a third of the minutes in a game that the team ultimately won by nine. It was not a performance that either tainted or amplified anything Joel had done in the Olympics leading up to it, not one that particularly fed, rebuked or otherwise transformed any larger narratives about him. He got through it, and he got the Gold.
And that's basically where I think we are for the entire tournament with Embiid. If folks remember any one performance of his from Lille, it'll most likely be him showing out in the semis, and not any of his early strugglefests. But in the end, he's just not the story of this Team USA run. The story of Team USA was of the all-time greatness of LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry, and the separate moments each of the three got individually to remind viewers of their historic and unparalleled brilliance, at a time when all three are increasingly irrelevant to the NBA championship picture. Even in the semis, the most enduring images -- both mentally and visually -- will be of those three generation-defining Hall of Famers, leading the way throughout the fourth and embracing one another after the final buzzer. Sixers fans will have to carry the weight for ensuring the basketball world remembers how important Embiid's 19 points were to their survival in that game.
But he's leaving France healthy -- relatively speaking, anyway -- and he's leaving it a winner. There was a stretch during the Serbia game when it looked like a distinct possibility that Joel's career-long streak of not making it out of the second round would extend to international play as well -- and while I could've lived with a losing performance where we got to thrust all the blame onto Bam's and AD's shoulders for not being able to hold the fort while Embiid rested, it certainly would've been a bummer for him, and just more needless frustration in a career already filled past the brim with it. Instead, not only does Jo finally get to call himself a champion -- while triumphing over Jokic and Gobert, no less -- he can also rightly say that they would not have even gotten to the Gold medal game without him. He had some laughs, he made some friends, he helped sow further discontent among the suddenly all-bad-vibes Celtics. Not a bad way to spend a summer abroad, all told. Now onto more pressing business back home.
Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.
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