But he can also step away from the basket and drain a jump shot. There are plenty of big guys, from Bill Russell to Shaquille O'Neal, who make outstanding careers out of doing that.Įmbiid does that too, of course.
The reason how to#
Stand near the basket, learn how to position your body, and you're going to get plenty of easy scoring chances. If you're over 7 feet tall, like Embiid is, you don't necessarily have to be that good of a shooter to succeed at basketball.
The reason professional#
To really understand this story, you have to understand what makes Embiid special, even among the athletic freaks and superhuman scoring machines that are modern professional basketball players. They really put their elbow in and finish up top.
"You know how I learned to shoot?" Embiid told Sports Illustrated in 2016, just before making his debut in the NBA. It's quite possible none of that would have happened without YouTube. Yesterday, he was named the NBA's Most Valuable Player for the 2022-23 season. He was drafted third overall in 2014 by the Philadelphia 76ers, when he was barely 20 years old and still a relative newcomer to the sport. In 2012, he was recruited to the University of Kansas, one of the top college basketball programs in the country, despite being described as "more prospect than player at this stage" in an ESPN profile. That opened the door for his 2011 move to the U.S., where Embiid enrolled at a prep school and kept training. Mbah a Moute convinced Embiid to commit to learning basketball. He'd been on track to become a professional volleyballer before being spotted by a retired NBA star, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, who ran a basketball camp in Yaoundé, Embiid's hometown (and Cameroon's capital). Until he was 15, Embiid hardly played hoops at all. One thing he didn't really know much about, however, was how to actually shoot a basketball. When Joel Embiid arrived in the United States from Cameroon as a gangly 16-year-old back in 2011, he already possessed many of the physical traits-height, athleticism, massive wingspan-that he'd one day employ to become a superstar in the NBA.
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