There are a few high notes any profile on Joel Embiid hits: his tall tale about killing a lion as a youngster; learning to shoot from watching white people on YouTube; his love of Shirley Temples; his many social media exploits.
Clay Skipper’s piece on Embiid for GQ’s first digital cover treads all of that familiar territory. But it also explores some other interesting areas of Embiid’s life.
For instance, Embiid had this to say about dating in the NBA:
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"You gotta do your background check,' he says. 'You don't want to be that guy marrying a girl that someone else in the NBA has been with.... I'm sure some guys end up getting married to women that have been around. And maybe on the court they also get told' — here he lowers his voice to a whisper — 'Hey, I f—ed your wife.'
A highlight of the piece for Sixers fans will be Embiid’s insistence that he wants to be with the Sixers for the rest of his career, even if Skipper sounds skeptical of Embiid’s love for Philly.
Skipper writes, “Asked what happens to the Process nickname if he goes to another team, Embiid says, ‘I want to be in Philly for the rest of my life,’ which seems like something only somebody who has been in Philly for less than five years might say.”
Oh, and apparently Embiid still hasn’t given up on his childhood dream of being an astronaut. According to Skipper, even though he learned on a trip to NASA last year that he’s way too big to fit into a spaceship, Embiid thinks it would be “easy” to pick up rocket science once his NBA career is over.
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There are a number of other good nuggets in the profile, from Embiid’s despair at reading Twitter comments calling him a “bust” to details about his oversized diet.
You can read the full piece here.
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