Embiid was a teenager in Cameroon when he first saw Kobe Bryant in all his swaggering, gunslinging glory during the 2009 NBA Finals. Embiid didn't speak English and had never played organized basketball, yet he knew he wanted to be like Kobe someday.
"I just liked his mentality, the way he was playing. He just didn't care," Embiid says. "I think I needed to figure out a way to be like that more."
In another life-- or another body-- Embiid would probably be out running sand dunes like Bryant did at 4 a.m. as a way of channeling the restless id inside him. But Embiid's body would never tolerate that, so the competitiveness manifests elsewhere. It's why he trash-talks and taunts on the court right up to the line where someone might swing at him. Why he plays video games deep into the night, even bringing his PlayStation on road trips. "I just love winning," he says. "When I play, I rarely lose, so it makes me feel good about myself. And I keep winning, winning, winning."
"I played [PlayStation] with him once and said I'll never do it again," Sixers guard T.J. McConnell says. "He talks the most crap ever. ... I wanted to throw the controller out of his apartment building."
Embiid says he's reached out to Bryant on several occasions, drawn to Kobe's supreme confidence. How do you shoot 30-plus times in a game and never feel even the smallest twinge of guilt about it?
"After 15 to 20 shots, I feel like my teammates might be looking at me," Embiid says. "I don't want that to be on me. But I feel like sometimes I need to."
Bryant didn't take all those shots because he had no conscience. He took them, Embiid says, because he knew he could make them. "He was always working on his shot, so that's why he felt like he could.
"When everyone else was partying, he was working on his shot. I have to get a little of that."
So Embiid doesn't drink alcohol or spend much time at parties. He studies classic NBA games like they're textbooks. He watches his contemporaries, like Karl-Anthony Towns, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kristaps Porzingis, Anthony Davis and Nikola Jokic, knowing he'll likely do battle with them in the playoffs someday.
He studies his own team and thinks there is still room to grow. Simmons' game is limited by his lack of outside shooting, which collapses the space Embiid has to work inside. There will also be an adjustment period when rookie point guard Markelle Fultz returns from a shoulder injury and tries to find his place in the offense.
"We're still working on our chemistry, especially with me and Ben on the court," Embiid says.
"I think with everything, the main thing we have to do is just stay together, because I feel like there's going to be some type of situation where people say who is better between us three. And that's how it splits."
IT IS NOW Embiid's job to ensure that it doesn't. That's part of accepting the $146.5 million contract and wanting to be the face of the franchise. You have a responsibility to lead it.
In many ways, the 23-year-old is a natural-born leader. His infectious personality is like a gravitational force. Teammates flock to him after games and on off-days. But if Embiid is the sun at the center of the Sixers' solar system, Simmons is the moon. The young Australian mostly keeps to himself and has a natural quietness to him.
"Night and day," Sixers wing Justin Anderson says of his teammates' personalities.
“I don't go over the line, but I feel like I'm always right there.”
- Joel EmbiidFor Embiid to take this team to its full potential, he has to do it with Simmons, which means they need to foster a relationship that has at times been distant.
"They have a role to play in each other's success," coach Brett Brown says. "What interests me more than going out to dinner or being together off the court all the time is respect on the court. And the respect is generated because you look at somebody and know they care, know they work, know the team is in their best interest."
Brown spent 12 years working under Gregg Popovich in San Antonio, and he says it took years for Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, the core of the Spurs dynasty, to find out how to play-- and win-- together. Popovich was always the strongest voice in the room, Duncan led by example, Parker was the beating heart, Ginobili was the conscience. Brown says he used to get emails from Duncan at all hours of the night, musing on how to address an issue the team needed to work on.
"Everybody's got their own way to deliver a message," Brown says. "To try to force a style of leadership on anybody is not what I'm interested in."
Of course, Embiid's style of leadership isn't always the most politically correct.
"Having your teammates' backs-- that's what I feel being a leader is," Embiid says.
This year that's meant Brown and the Sixers have to bite their tongues when Embiid criticizes the way they've handled situations with Fultz, whose mysterious shoulder injury has kept him from any meaningful action, and former lottery pick Jahlil Okafor, who was finally traded to the Nets on Dec. 7, more than a month after requesting to leave.
"The whole thing with Markelle is messed up," Embiid says. "It should not have happened. Obviously, it has something to do with his shoulder-- I saw that they said it wasn't the shoulder, but I don't believe it.
"With Jahlil, I really appreciate that he didn't want to cause a scene," he says. "If it was me, I feel like I would have lost it. I don't know if I could have handled it."
Embiid makes headlines and ruffles feathers when he talks like this. Same as he did when he co-opted "The Process" as his nickname. Teammates mostly are amused by it. "He loves to poke the bear-- he thrives on it," Stauskas says. "I've never really seen anything like it. It's different, but it works."
In the end, trusting the process really means trusting Embiid.
"We encourage him to explore and be a little bit unfiltered," Brown says with a smile. "That's how he lives. And that's how he plays."
Seven years ago, Embiid didn't speak English, let alone play basketball, and now he's wickedly funny in another language and one of the most skilled big men in the sport. Amy Lombard for ESPN
EMBIID HAS DONE so much in his young career-- through 50 games, he scored more points than Olajuwon, grabbed more rebounds than Patrick Ewing, had more assists and 3-pointers than Olajuwon, Ewing, O'Neal, Dwight Howard and David Robinson-- that it's easy to forget how quickly this has all happened.
Seven years ago, the man didn't speak English, let alone play basketball, and now he's wickedly funny in another language and one of the most skilled big men in the sport. He jokes that he learned English by listening to rap music and how to shoot by "watching [videos] of white people." But clearly there's more to it.
"I look like I'm not listening, but I'm actually listening," Embiid explains. "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."
So far he's figured it out pretty well. For every testy Twitter exchange that goes right up to the line, Embiid does 10 more playful, irreverent things that seem solely motivated by a boyish sense of adventure.
He's out shagging fly balls during the Home Run Derby at the MLB All-Star Game. He's at the World Series, tweeting "Let's Go Astros!" while wearing a Dodgers jersey. He's playing tennis on a public court at night with strangers who challenge him to a game.
On the one hand, Embiid is an anthropologist, using what is obviously a brilliant mind to study our culture with fresh eyes. On the other, he's Tom Hanks in the movie Big, testing out games meant for children while in the body of a man.
Before the NBA draft, his first agent, Arn Tellem, hired a social media coach for Embiid. At first, Embiid followed his instructions to post unassuming, sports-focused updates. "But unfortunately I got hurt and I didn't have anything to do," Embiid says. "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."
Pretty soon he was asking Rihanna out on a date and recruiting LeBron James via Twitter.
"On social media, I can hide behind the computer or the iPhone," Embiid says. "Internet courage."
There's the playful troll again. The kidding-not-kidding wink that masks why Embiid likes to play so close to the fire.
He doesn't want to get burned. He just needs to feel the heat. All this trolling, this button-pushing, it's just a warm-up-- his way of summoning the greatness to back it up.
Shelburne is a senior writer for ESPN. She spent seven years at the Los Angeles Daily News.
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