sport news Joel Embiid slammed by Fred Weis for choosing USA over France before 2024 Paris ... trends now
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Former New York Knicks draft bust Frederic Weis has slammed Joel Embiid for snubbing France to play for Team USA this summer, as he jokingly suggested that the NBA star should be banned from the 2024 Paris Olympics altogether.
Weis - an Olympic silver medalist in 2000 and the victim of the notorious 'dunk of death' by Vince Carter - didn't hold back while talking about Embiid - the reigning NBA MVP - on a French radio station Saturday.
His comments come just days after Embiid was named on USA basketball's Olympic roster.
In March, Jean-Pierre Siutat - the president of the French national basketball team - criticized the 76ers star for rebuffing the chance to play for Les Bleus, two years after he claimed to have started Embiid's naturalization process to become a French citizen.
Embiid, who was born in Cameroon, is also a naturalized U.S. Citizen since 2022, and can therefore play for his country of birth, the Star and Stripes, or France, despite having no ties to the latter. He rejected the chance to play for Cameroon in 2017.
'I consider this boy a great player as much as he is a dirty guy. I hate him for the things that he did. I think he doesn't have any respect for France and also for all the people who are asking for a French passport and don't get it. And under the pretext that he is a great athlete, he got it. I find it scandalous, I find it embarrassing. I don't care about his excuses, cause they are his words, and his words mean nothing,' Weis said.
