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Earlier this week, I mentioned that Joel Embiid made an appearance in the newest print issue of GQ magazine. It’s more of a cameo really - a picture with a glorified paragraph - but GQ’s website just went live with a full Embiid Q&A and it’s as amazing as you’d expect.
On who he plays with in NBA2k:
When I play 2K, I’ll play in GM mode. And I choose different teams. But I always trade for myself because I’m unstoppable. Literally there’s no way to stop me in 2K. I average like 40 and 15, and like 8 assists, and be MVP of the year ... I gotta start with a team that sucks, like the Lakers or the Nets. I gotta make it fair. I’m the master of trading, so even with the Nets, they don’t have like high-rated players in the game, but I get someone like me and the number one pick for the next draft.
On wanting to be the guy at the end of a game:
I know this year there’s a lot of pressure on us to make the playoffs. We got a lot of potential, but the key is just to stay healthy, and I think as long as we all stay healthy—especially me—we have a chance. But I love being in pressure moments. I love taking the last shot. I love taking the last free throws to seal the games. I just want to make it so I can go to the crowd and be like, “Shut the f—k up.”
He even waxed philosophical on “The Process” and what it means to trust it:
The Process is never going to end. I don’t think The Process is ever going to reach 100 percent. It’s a process to make the playoffs. It’s another one to make the conference final. Another one to make it to the NBA finals and win the championship. And when you win the championship that year, then it starts all over again. So it’s just a cycle. Then it applies to work within your life whenever you’ve got something going on and you know that as long as you put in the work, you’ve just got to trust the process. Everything happens for a reason.
You could teach an entire college philosophy course on that last quote. I would know. I once did really well in an honors-level course on the works of Hume and Kant and I remember absolutely nothing about it.