Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid is an animal on the court. He’s a force to be reckoned with, and is already beginning to show why he was worthy of the third overall pick in the 2014 draft.
Embiid, at a young age, had to be an animal off the court as well, apparently.
The Sixers big man grew up in Cameroon, and later immigrated to the United States at age 16. He recently opened up to Adrian Wojnarowski on The Vertical Podcast about it.
“Since I’ve been here, I feel Americans, they don’t really have any idea of what’s going on in the world, especially us Africans,” he said.
He then casually remarked about how, when playing for the Kansas Jayhawks, he would scare his opponents by telling a tale involving killing a lion in Africa.
“When they think about Africans, they think about, you know, just us running around with lions and tigers, and all those other animals. So, when I got to Kansas, I kind of used that to my advantage, talking about how I killed a lion.”
But Embiid wasn’t done with this story. He remarked that he was only six years old when he allegedly did the deed.
“That’s how I became a man, because at 6 years old, I had to go in a jungle and kill a lion, and carried it on my back to bring back to my village just to show that I’m a man.”
If Embiid did, indeed, kill a lion as a six-year-old, then yes, he certainly became a man at a young age.
So take heed, other NBA big men, because you’re going up against a man that says he once killed a lion. Try not to get on Embiid’s bad side.
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