When Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid was a young boy in Cameroon, basketball was not his first sport. He was set to play volleyball: He was able to use his height in that sport to excel.
However, he found out about a star named Kobe Bryant who was killing the league with the Los Angeles Lakers and leading them to a title in the 2010 NBA Finals against the Boston Celtics. Embiid watched the Lakers star and felt inspired to play basketball.
“I was about 13 or something like that,” Embiid started. “It was the finals against Boston and it was my first time watching NBA basketball and it happened to be on the Lakers. All I kept hearing was Kobe and they won that year. That was the first time I watched and that was also when I fell in love with basketball, and that’s why he became my favorite player. I will say that I’m probably here because of him.”
Still, Embiid’s parents would not let him play basketball, no matter how inspired by Bryant he was at 13 years old. They wanted him to focus on volleyball.
“Even at that age, I didn’t start playing right away, because my dad thought the game was too physical,” he added. “He didn’t want me to play basketball, and it took a lot of convincing until I got to 16 years old for him to actually let me start playing basketball. From there, I went through a lot.”
Embiid grew up with strict parents who made sure his focus was on schoolwork rather than on sports. So when it came to watching Bryant, he had to be sneaky.
“My parents, they were kinda tough,” Embiid explained. “We had school nights, so we couldn’t stay awake. We had to go to bed by 9. I didn’t even watch all the games, I watched here and there. I could never watch more than one game a week, even one game a month, maybe, but at that time during the finals, it was on during the summertime so we didn’t have any school. Even then, I still had to go to bed, so we would still sneak out and go to the big room and turn on the TV volume all the way down, just get to watch it. So it was tough.”
One could say, well what about YouTube? There is always that option, even at that time.
“Even with YouTube, I didn’t get the chance, because my parents were kind of tough when it came to electronics,” the Sixers star added. “Video games or TV, we had a time that we could be on it and most of the time we were just didn’t because we had to do a bunch of stuff, clean the house and all that stuff. It was hard, but whenever I got the chance, I enjoyed it, and I try to learn as much as I can, even though I wasn’t playing.”
Bryant is set to be inducted into the Hall of Fame on May 15, and he will be represented by the great Michael Jordan, Embiid reminisced on the late Bryant’s life to finish his praise of the Lakers legend. He wore No. 24 to honor Bryant after his passing in January of 2020.
“Kobe, we miss him a lot. I miss him a lot,” he finished. “He was my favorite player and even when you watch the way I play basketball and the moves that I’ve added, especially when it comes to fadeaways over both shoulders, that comes from a lot of tapes on Kobe’s game. I miss him a lot. I wish he was still here with us.”
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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