“When I retire, I want to make sure they say: no one could stop him offensively or defensively. I’d like to think I’m a goddamn monster.” Joel Embiid (Cameroon, 1994) is the new most valuable player of the season in the NBA, the American professional basketball league reports. The Philadelphia 76ers center, a six-time All-Star, criticized days ago in ‘The Athletic’ for not yet achieving the coveted MVP award: “I don’t make the rules, I don’t choose the criteria they use, so it’s really about people’s preferences. And I don’t care, but every year is something ». The leader of the third-place Sixers in the Eastern Conference, who was absent from the first game of the semifinal against the Celtics, added 33.1 points per game during the regular season to become the leading scorer for the second consecutive season, something a center had not achieved since Bob McAdoo in 1976. Standing 2.13 meters tall and weighing 127 kilograms, he dominates this very important statistic in the top basketball league in the world and wins for the first in his career the best player award, ahead of Nikola Jokic, Serb, and Giannis Antetokoumpo, Greek. The African is the seventh non-American player to receive the award in history. “I’ve been through a lot, and I’m not just talking about basketball, but about life, because of my history, where I’m from, what it took me to get here. It’s fantastic… I want people to remember that anything is possible. I started playing when I was 16 and it’s complicated. It took a lot of work and a lot of luck. Everything is possible, you have to have faith,” explained the Yaoundé-born player who told in an article a few years ago that he learned how to shoot three-pointers with a tutorial from random people on YouTube. “I barely knew anything about the NBA because I which I never saw in Cameroon. And I don’t mean we were too poor and we didn’t have a television. My mother was very strict at school. I could never stay up to watch the games. As I got older, I became more rebellious and I ran away from home to play,” explains the 29-year-old who started playing in the summer of 2011 at the age of 16 by chance: Luc Mbah a Moute, player Cameroonian player in the NBA , organized a campus in his own city to attract new talent and convinced him to travel to the United States. He was about to give up at the first opportunity, as he recalled years later in a documentary about his life produced by ESPN, but he changed his mindset, improved his technique and his qualities sprouted. A few months later, he signed for The Rock School, a school he led to win the state championship thanks to his marked improvement in the game, and a year later, he landed at the University of Kansas, where his averages began to rise. clearly on the doors of the nba. While physical issues haven’t allowed him to play a full regular season since arriving in Philadelphia, the player who was thrown out by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2014 Draft has been improving season after season to improve himself. consolidate in the elite and be in the last. always in the regular season MVP pool for several years. Since playing the all-star game in 2018, the player who prides himself on being a Real Madrid social media follower is selected for that event every year, always as a starter. This season, the African center also added 10.2 rebounds and made 54.8% of his field goals, the best mark of his career. He is the third player in NBA history to average at least 33 points and 10 rebounds on 54% shooting. He exceeded 50 points in three games and 40 in thirteen games. Now, after achieving individual success, he is more focused than ever on the collective: “That’s what I’m focused on. What matters is winning, winning, winning, and the only way to earn respect is an NBA ring.”
Source: La Verdad
I am Shawn Partain, a journalist and content creator working for the Today Times Live. I specialize in sports journalism, writing articles that cover major sporting events and news stories. With a passion for storytelling and an eye for detail, I strive to be accurate and insightful in my work.
