Joel Embiid baffled by boos, ready to flex on France

Joel Embiid knows the boos are coming Saturday when he takes the court with Team USA against France in the gold medal game in Paris.

Never one to shy away from a dispute, Embiid is returning the disdain from French fans showering him with boos and chants when he takes the court. He was eligible to play for the other side -- France -- or Cameroon in the 2024 Games. But Embiid said he made the easy call to join the United States, where he has lived since age 16 before playing basketball at Kansas and being drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers.

"Having lived half of my life in the U.S. and the other half in my country, Cameroon, it just looked like it was, you could go two ways," Embiid said. "I said, from the beginning, and everybody knew that if Cameroon would've qualified, that would've never been a choice. And then having the family (in America) and having built a lot of things and having accomplished a lot of things in the U.S. and then knowing the group of guys deeply, it just made it easy."

It's not that simple to France, which approved Embiid's citizenship request in 2022. The process included a direct conversation with President Emmanuel Macron.

Macron and French basketball president Jean-Pierre Siutat insisted that Embiid gave them a "yes" in exchange for French residency for himself and his son, Arthur, according to a report in The Athletic.

Embiid, 30, isn't sweating the venom on Saturday, where his focus is on the gold.

"Frankly, I don't understand why I've gotten a lot of criticism from the crowd," Embiid said. "They're going to boo me. I'm going to go back at them and tell them to 'suck it.' And so it's going to be fun."

--Field Level Media