Joel Embiid has the athleticism and size to dominate in a variety of sports. His father wanted him to play professional volleyball, but he choose basketball to dominate. It’s all worked out, especially for the Philadelphia 76ers, but as it turns out Embiid didn’t always have hoop dreams.
In fact, his first dream job has actually been shot down by the people most likely to make it happen. Embiid was featured in a nice profile in GQ that also doubles as a commercial for the Pixel 3. In it, Embiid revealed that his first dream job was to go to space as an astronaut.
Of course, Embiid didn’t grow up dreaming of being a volleyball player. He wanted to be…an astronaut, which he realizes now was a job not likely to be showcased at his middle school career fair. “[In] Cameroon, we don’t know shit about space,” he says. “I don’t even know if there’s a Cameroonian astronaut. That’s what I wanted to become. I wanted to become president, and I wanted to become an astronaut. Because I was really good at math.”
The profile talks to a few different sources about his skill set and also his brain. Embiid says people often talk to him like he’s a dumb athlete, but the guy speaks three languages and learns quickly. He learned to shoot threes watching YouTube videos and has mastered the Dream Shake. There’s very little he can do.
Except go to space because, as we learn, he’s already asked NASA about it. Embiid is just too tall to get there logistically.
He knows there could be complications. He learned last year, on a visit to NASA, that he definitely can’t fit in the space ship. Plus: there’s the math. Embiid says he’s not so sure he’s as good with numbers any more. But he’s undeterred. He figures, maybe he can get into some program that’ll help put him on the path to NASA. The ever-confident Embiid says it’d be “easy” to pick up rocket science once he’s done with this job, dunking on people. Despite the obvious hurdles, he estimates that he could be the first seven-footer in space in a year and a half, if he really put in the time.
Considering the infinite space that exists in, well, space, it’s kind of funny to think a 7-footer can’t actually fit in space. But it’s more of a math and logistical problem than a space problem. Maybe that will change in time, but right now, Embiid is stuck on Earth like the rest of us.
