Tyler Trumbauer
The day after TJ McConnell hit the buzzer-beater against the New York Basketball Knicks [who are terrible], Joel Embiid joined The Dan Patrick Show for an interview. In that interview, Embiid’s “The Process” nickname came up and Patrick asked him about what nickname he would have if he didn’t have that one.
Then, fun ensued. Embiid told the story – again – of him killing a lion when he was six years old. Patrick’s reaction, whether he was acting or not, was gold. Here’s the exchange:
Dan Patrick: If your nickname wasn’t ‘The Process’, what would it be? … Did you have one at Kansas?
Embiid: At Kansas, they called me ‘The Lion Killer.’
Patrick: Have you actually killed a lion, Joel?
Embiid: Yeah, you want to know the story?
Patrick: Yeah, yeah, yeah, give me the story.
Embiid: You know, when I was five/six years old, I had to go into the jungle to kill the lion. That was a way for me to prove that I was a bad man. That was also a way for me to become a man. So I went into the jungle and I killed a lion when he fell asleep. Then I carried the lion on my back, back to the village, and when I got to the village, that was just the proving that I was a man. I’ve been a man since I was six years old.
Patrick: So, wait, you’re six years old, you killed a lion. You bring the lion back to the village?
Embiid: Yup.
Patrick: Wow … Now, are there six-year-olds that go into the jungle and don’t come back as they’re trying to be a man killing a lion?
Embiid: I mean, you know, I’m kind of different, I’ve always been told my whole life. So I think it was an easy job.
Patrick: Has anyone else on the 76ers killed a lion?
Embiid: No.
So, is the story true? Embiid told the same story twice before at least – once to Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical back in November. Here’s what he said then, via the Washington Post:
“I feel like Americans don’t really have any idea of what’s going on in the world, especially us Africans,” Embiid said. “I feel like when they think about Africans, they think about just us running around with lions and tigers and all those other animals. When I got to Kansas I kind of used that to my advantage, talking about how I killed a lion and that’s how I became a man because at six years old I had to go into the jungle and kill a lion and carried it on my back to bring back to my village just to show that I’m a man. And they bought into it… I don’t know. It might be true, it might be false. I don’t know. But that’s the perception Americans have of Africans.”
[In Philadelphia, the love affair between Joel Embiid and 76ers fans is underway]
“You could see the expressions,” Embiid said, when asked about the reactions of people when he told that story. “That makes them fear you. I kind of used that to my advantage, too. If you’re gonna tell someone ‘I killed a lion,’ they’re gonna be afraid of you and they’re not gonna come at you. So that was a way for me to make them be scared of me.
“The story might be true or it might be false. Nobody would ever know but if anybody tries me, they’re gonna find out.”
Two years before that, when he was at Kansas and before being drafted by the Sixers, he told the story to his teammates, obviously, since that’s how he got the nickname. Here’s an excerpt from an article about that. [The Kansas City Star]
This is a story about Joel Embiid, the lion killer.
It was late last summer, and the Kansas basketball team had gathered in the locker room for a post-workout tradition. The exercise was called “Thursday Vibes,” and it was pretty simple. The players would go around the circle, sharing secrets and stories. It was meant to be a team-building exercise, and Embiid, who had arrived on campus earlier that summer, was up next.
The story came together quickly: Embiid had killed a lion back in Cameroon.
“It wasn’t the king of the jungle,” Tharpe recalled. “It was like a nice-sized lion, and he said he killed it.”
On that day, the story began.
“JoJo killed a lion,” Tharpe said. “We weren’t going to question the man.”
The only problem: Like a creation myth that keeps changing, becoming more exaggerated each time, Embiid’s story kept evolving.
“First he told us this big lie about him and his tribe,” former teammate Niko Roberts said. “He had to go through this ‘becoming a man’ process. And he had to kill a lion with his bare hands. Then he tells us it was with a spear. Then the next time he might have shot the lion.”
“I don’t know,” Roberts continued, smiling. “He was just the biggest liar on the team.”
There were other cracks in the story. Embiid had grown up in the bustling city of Yaounde. His father, Thomas, a former handball player, had raised his two kids on a comfortable military salary. Young Joel took to soccer, enjoying the rhythms of the game.
“I should have been a goalkeeper,” Embiid said, upon arriving at Kansas. “But I was a midfielder.”
He never killed a lion, but he did dream of becoming one — an indomitable lion, the nickname of the Cameroon national soccer team.
But then he found basketball.
Good thing he found basketball. Because I wouldn’t want to be a lion. Just in case.
You can listen to Embiid telling the story, and the entire interview, below.