Embiid scares opponents with tale of killing a lion in Africa

Joel Embiid may or may not have killed a lion.

Either way, that's what the Philadelphia 76ers rookie, who immigrated to the U.S. from Cameroon when he was 16, tells Americans.

"Since I've been here, I feel Americans, they don't really have any idea of what's going on in the world, especially us Africans," he told Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical.

"When they think about Africans, they think about, you know, just us running around with lions and tigers, and all those other animals. So, when I got to Kansas, I kind of used that to my advantage, talking about how I killed a lion.

"'That's how I became a man, because at 6 years old, I had to go in a 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. It might be true or it might be false. I don't know. But that's the perception Americans have on Africans."

The 22-year-old jokester made this claim - despite growing up in the second-biggest city in Cameroon as a member of the upper-middle class - because it instilled fear in his college basketball opponents. He intends to tell NBA players the same tale.

"The story might be true or it might be false, nobody would ever know," he said. "But if anybody tries me, they're gonna find out."

As for his own perceptions of America, Embiid said that before moving stateside, he expected it to be like "heaven." The current political climate, however, concerns him.

"It's just hard to understand why people elected (Trump to be president). It just shows you the way people think. ... Racism isn't over," he said.

It's a shame, "The Process" added, and he hopes it won't be as bad as the media has made it out to be.