You certainly cannot accuse Joel Embiid of giving cookie-cutter answers.
The Philadelphia 76ers star Embiid sat down with David Marchese of the New York Times for a wide-ranging interview that ran Saturday. During the interview, Embiid, who is playing for Team USA at the Olympics was asked if he had any doubts that the U.S. would be able to take home the gold medal. Embiid responded with some comments about the makeup of the team and mentioned teammate LeBron James specifically.
“You look at the talent that the U.S. has, but there’s equal talent on other teams,” said Embiid. “And the talent that’s on the U.S. team, you also got to understand most of those guys are older. The LeBron now is not the LeBron that was a couple of years ago. So it’s a big difference.
“Everybody would also tell you, and you can see for yourself, the athletic LeBron, dominant that he was a couple of years ago, is not the same that he is now,” Embiid went on. “I think people get fooled by the names on paper. But those names have been built throughout their career, and now they’re older. They’re not what they used to be.”
The interview with Marchese touches on many other interesting topics, and you can read it in full here.
Embiid definitely is not wrong with his comments about James, who will turn 40 later this year. But there were about 100 more diplomatic answers that Embiid could have given there. Instead of simply expressing confidence that the U.S. would be able to get the job done, Embiid really seemed to zero in on James being over-the-hill. He did not even mention the other older players on the roster (such as Steph Curry, 36, Kevin Durant, 35, and Jrue Holiday, 34) or the younger players the U.S. has to compensate for it (like Jayson Tatum, 26, Tyrese Haliburton, 24, and Anthony Edwards, 22).
Perhaps this is just Embiid’s roundabout way of trying to temper the expectations for Team USA. He himself has struggled through the first several exhibition games and recently fired back at the critics of his international basketball play.
