Joel Embiid delivers words of wisdom to No. 1 overall draft selection Victor Wembanyama

In a recent article from David Aldridge at The Athletic, Joel Embiid shared some words of wisdom for the first overal pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, Victor Wembanyama.

Embiid, who faced a ton of adversity and setbacks with injuries at the beginning of his own NBA career, obviously developed into the league’s Most Valuable Player and one of the most dominant players on planet Earth.

If there’s anyone who could offer a young player some advice, it certainly be the reigning NBA MVP who’s on pace to repeat as a back-to-back award winner.

David Aldridge from The Athletic had the opportunity to interview several players including Giannis, Porzingis, and Luka, who had also had rough rookie patches similar to what Wembanyama is battling through right now.

Call me bias, but Joel Embiid had the most noteworthy advice of them all.

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Joel Embiid’s advice for Victor Wembanyama:

Not trying to be too critical. Obviously, [he’s] extremely talented; right now, there’s so much hype around him, I think he’s trying to live up to the hype. That’s what I see. And I watch a lot of games.”

“I think, first of all, he has to figure out where he wants to play, whether he wants to be a guard or a big or whatever. It’s not necessarily whether he wants to be a guard or a big; it’s what he wants to become. 

“Do you want to become KD, or do you want to become me? Not KD, or like a version of those guys — you want to combine everything. Right now, I just feel like everything kind of feels a little forced in the way that he’s playing. Which is not bad. Because the only way to get better is to play through it and learn. That’s the only way. You make a lot of mistakes, and you learn.”

Very insightful stuff from Embiid here. He makes a good point in asking what type of player Wembanyama wants to be and at the same time, he doesn’t close the door on the young phenom becoming a blend of several different players, including KD and himself.

The sky’s truly the limit for a player like Wembanyama, and Embiid is living proof of that. While I’m still personally figuring out the player Wemby is and who he should strive to become, the biggest takeaway here is how much the game of basketball in the NBA has and continues to evolve.

The center or “big man” position has changed before our very eyes. Similar to the “point guard revolution” or “ball-handler ” role over the last decade, it seems the big man could be the next one where organizations around the league seem to be shifting focus in scouting or developing the next great one.

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I mainly wrote this because, for one, I thought it was very interesting, but two, I didn’t love some of the Twitter headlines I saw from this. A lot of people are taking this the wrong way, like Embiid is criticizing Wemby. As usual, Twitter is completely wrong because back here in reality, Embiid is offering great advice to the rookie.

Joel Embiid on his first NBA Season

“It was tough. Obviously, those were dark times. I came in, and that was back in the day when I used to be really on Twitter,” Embiid said. “Everybody used to talk about I would never play because that was the same injury that a lot of big men had, and never came back from it. And I was also going through my brother dying. Those were dark times.”

“At the time, honestly, I didn’t care about basketball. I wanted to quit. But I loved the game so much I was like, I always gotta pay attention. One of the things that I’ve always done, and that I’m still doing, and that’s never gonna change, is I just watch a lot of basketball.“

I always have a basketball game on. It doesn’t matter; any time of the day, any time of the night, if I’m not watching my own games, I’m going to watch any other game. That’s how I learn,” Embiid continued.

I’ve always been so fascinated with Joel Embiid’s basketball-watching habits. It still seems so insane to me that he’s arguably the best player in the NBA and he’s still relatively new to the game and learning more. The guy picked up a basketball when he was 16 years old.

That is why I always tell people when we have Sixers debates that I wouldn’t put a ceiling on Embiid.

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