95 Joel Embiid Quotes On Basketball, The Process, Confidence & Success
Jan 24, 2024
The best (and funniest) Joel Embiid quotes:
Joel Embiid is a professional basketball player who currently plays for the Philadelphia 76ers in the NBA.
Embiid was born in Cameroon and didn't begin playing basketball until he was 15 years old. He went to the University of Kansas for one season before declaring for the NBA Draft.
Embiid was selected as the 3rd overall pick by the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2014 NBA Draft. He made his NBA debut in the 2016-2017 season after missing his first two seasons due to injuries.
Joel has been selected as an NBA All-Star multiple times and in 2023, he won the NBA MVP Award.
His development as a player is nothing short of remarkable. At Kansas, he was more of a traditional center.
Now, the skills he possesses at his size make him very unique. Embiid worked hard to develop a jump shot which has made him a much more versatile player.
Embiid is also known for his love of competition, trash-talking, and having fun on the court.
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Joel Embiid Quotes About The Process
1. "People have labeled the Process as whatever, tanking. I don't see it like that."
2. "Trust The Process."
3. "The Process is never going to end. It's an ongoing thing. I don't think it's ever going to stop. As I have explained before, it's a process for making it to the playoffs, it's another one to make the conference finals, another one to actually go to The Finals and win the championship."
4. "We're always going to be trusting the process."
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Top Joel Embiid Basketball Quotes
5. "Philly will be the place for me for my whole career."
6. "If I feel great and my body feels great and my knee is fine, I should play 30 minutes or more. I definitely have my opinion on that."
7. "I feel like I'm one of the most physical players in the league - I love contact. I love attacking. I love going to the free throw line."
8. "A lot of people just think I'm a big man, but I'm a basketball player. I am able to do everything that a basketball player can do - from playmaking and scoring to just passing the ball and just being a leader and post presence."
9. "I'm starting to figure it out - figure out my spots, where I should be on the court, where I'm most effective, and how I handle double teams - and it's paying off."
10. "On the defensive end, I have to do my job."
11. "In a season, you're going to go through slumps."
12. "I'm very good at drawing fouls."
13. "I love being physical."
14. "Back in 2011, I was kind of shy. I wasn't as good because that was the year, also, when I started playing basketball."
15. "I want to be that type of guy - I want to be Kobe Bryant. I want to be Tim Duncan. I want to be Dirk Nowitzki - stay with one team my whole career."
16. "I think the concept of minute restrictions is kind of complicated. I don't think there should ever be minute restrictions. I think it should always be about how my body feels and how it's reacting."
17. "The first time I watched basketball was in 2010.
18, "When I started playing ball as a junior, I'm kind of glad that I was never good enough to be highly recruited."
19. "All of the great big men went to college at least two or three years. I think it's a big factor. I don't know if it will always work, but I think it's the best choice."
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Embiid Quotes About Confidence
20. "I want people to say that an African basketball player is the best player in the whole world."
21. "One thing when I started playing in the league, I saw that a lot of guys are friendly. It's OK to be friendly, especially off the court. But on the court, I want to dominate."
22. "I have lots of confidence in myself that I can fulfill my dreams and make the people of Philadelphia proud."
23. "I feel like I have a lot of potential, a lot of stuff to show."
24. "I'm actually really good at everything I do."
25. "If they're going to foul me, I'm going to step to the line and make some free throws."
26. "I think of myself as a complete player."
27. "I feel like I am the best defensive player in the league."
28. "I'm not cocky, I'm humble, but I think I can be really special, one of the top players in the league."
29. "Every time, the mindset I get when I get on the floor is that I'm the best player on the floor."
30. "I think I'm a good offensive player, good defensive player. I do it on both ends of the floor."
31. "I really feel like I have the potential - and I'm not even kidding about it - I have the potential to be the best player in the league."
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Quotes From Embiid About Hard Work
32. "It's just about working on everything, perfecting everything, like my 3-point shot or ball handling."
33. "I love when people tell me that I was gonna be a bust. I enjoy when people tell me, 'You suck. You can't dribble. You can't shoot,' because it's like, gotta go to the gym."
34. "I'm just going to do my job, what coach wants me to do, be a defensive piece, and when needed to be a scorer, I'm going to be that."
35. "I had this DVD that my coach in Cameroon had mailed to me when I first came to America. It was an hour-long tape of Hakeem Olajuwon and some other legendary big men. I probably watched that DVD every single day for three years."
36. "Somehow, I convinced myself I was Hakeem. And I started getting better and better. And then I sort of started killing it."
37. "I look like I'm not listening, but I'm actually listening. I like listening to everything, observing everybody, just taking everything in, and then, in my mind, figuring out what's good for me and what's bad for me."
38. "I want to get in there and jump in the stands and dive for every loose ball."
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Joel On Competition And Trash Talk
39. "I love when people talk trash."
40. "I love competing. I mean, if you ask anybody around me, my coaches, they know I love competing. I hate losing."
41. "My coaches sometimes say I'm a little bit too competitive. But I want to win, and I feel like we should win every game."
42. "If I play against you the first time - or it doesn't even have to be the first time - and you want to be all physical and just talk, or talking trash or whatever, it just gets me going."
43. "I don't really care about the friendships on the court. I got my friends. I got my family, which I'm close to. I got a couple of friends that I'm always around."
44. "I love when guys come at the beginning of the game and start talking trash. It gets me going."
45. "I’m Joel. Joel Embiid. I don’t get disrespected. I do the disrespecting."
46. "I'm competitive, and I think everybody knows that if you're talking trash, you're gonna get a reaction out of me."
47. "I'm trying to dominate, and if you dominate, you're going to be hated because you're going to talk so much stuff."
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Joel Embiid On Success And Winning
48. "I want to win."
49. "If I'm playing well, and we're winning games, that's what I want."
50. "I started playing basketball very late, and for me to make it to the league so fast... I've always said my life is a movie."
51. "I always dream about that type of moment. In my head, I always kind of create that scenario, just about, like, some type of winning shot or block that's going to, like, really get the crowd into it."
52. "I want to be the Defensive Player of the Year and, if I have the chance, be MVP."
53. "Every time I get on the court, I want to push my teammates to be better as a leader and lead by example."
54. "I want to win the MVP. I feel like, at the end of the day, it might be an individual award, but when I play better, the team also does."
55. "I want to have a lot to do with winning a championship or bringing a championship back to the city of Philadelphia."
56. "I pretended my way to the NBA. I seriously got to the league by watching YouTube and living in the gym. There’s no other way to explain it."
57. "It's basketball; it's always good to blow a team out."
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Embiid Quotes About Having Fun
58. "I always like to have some type of connection with the crowd."
59. "If I'm not making plays, I can't get the crowd going. When I'm making plays, that's where I can feel a vibe and can get into it with the crowd."
60. "That's the whole point of playing basketball - having fun."
61. "Every time I'm on the court, every time a fan cheers for me, I just want to go out and make a play for them to cheer even more."
62. "I like playing in front of the crowd and get them into it."
63. "I like playing on the road and quieting the crowd. I love it."
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Joel Embiid Sayings About Life
64. "Everything in my life happens really fast."
65. "I think it would've been a little easier if I grew up in America; they've got better conditions for basketball players. At the same time, many people have said to me that having to start playing so late helped me not pick up bad habits."
66. "I started playing basketball so late, it just means that anything is possible."
67. "Sometimes, I feel like I'm lost. But I've always said that I believe in God."
68. "I don't really care about the friendships on the court. I got my friends. I got my family, which I'm close to. I got a couple of friends that I'm always around."
69. "I always think about myself as, like, a regular person. I want to be able to enjoy everything."
70. "At some points, I wanted to quit. There were surgeries after surgeries, and I didn't really believe in myself. I didn't feel good about my body."
71. "I always thought that the U.S. was just amazing, and it was just a dream. I thought it was Heaven. Coming here a couple years ago, you know, the U.S. is still nice, but it's not like what I thought it was going to be."
72. "I started liking basketball when I was 13, but I couldn't play because my dad thought it was too physical."
73. "Whatever happens happens. If something happens, something happens. But I believe in God, and I pray every day."
74. "I found social media was a way for me to open up and show the world who I was and also keep my name out there."
75. "My life is like a movie."
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Funny Joel Embiid Quotes
76. "One night, I went out with my teammates. I don't drink alcohol, so I wasn't drinking. This girl walked up to me; she was talking to me. She was like, 'Why aren't you drinking?' I was like, 'I just don't drink. Alcohol is nasty.' She said, 'I might have something for you.' She went and got a Shirley Temple. Then I was like, 'Ohhh, OK.'"
77. "You know how I learned to shoot? I watched white people. Just regular white people. They really put their elbow in and finish up top. You can find videos of them online."
78. "My very first scrimmage at Kansas, I got dunked on so hard by Tarik Black that I almost quit. Tarik dunked on me so hard that I was looking at plane tickets home. This guy was a senior. He was a grown man. I didn't know what was going on. He got his own rebound and dunked over me so hard that everything went in slow motion."
79. "What I hate the most is when the other team scores."
80. "On social media, I can hide behind the computer or the iPhone. Internet courage."
81. "Before games and sometimes practice, I like something with a dope beat. Like Rick Ross, when he's just like, 'RUH!,' all that stuff."
82. "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.'"
83. "I feel like Americans don't really have any idea of what's going on in the world, especially us Africans. I feel like when they think about Africans, they think about just us running around with lions and tigers and all those other animals."
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Other Joel Embiid Quotes
84. "When I sat down with Under Armour, one of the first things we talked about was how this can be bigger than just shoes, bigger than just basketball."
85. "When I was visiting schools, I wanted to go and see what they got. After my visit, I knew that Kansas was good."
86. "If the team needs me to recruit somebody, I'll be here. I'll be doing that."
87. "Having your teammates' backs - that's what I feel being a leader is."
88. "I'm not made of glass."
89. "One thing the fans got to understand is that I missed two years, and we took it really, really slow, and we made sure everything was good, and my foot has been great."
90. "I'm really not an injury-prone player. I just had that one injury that took, like, two years."
91. "I wanted to become president, and I wanted to become an astronaut. Because I was really good at math."
92. "I don't like to be involved in front-office stuff."
93. "There's definitely a lot of undiscovered talent in Africa. If I'm one of them and there's a few other guys in the league, that means that there must be some that are hidden."
94. "Agents recruiting high-school players and talking to high-schoolers - I feel like those are the people who put bad ideas in kids."
95. "Chinese fans are just passionate about the game. The love they have is just insane."
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