Joel Embiid had an announcement to make on Thursday night about something more important than basketball: He’s a father.
The 26-year-old All-Star joked on Twitter that he’s hoping to convince Anne De Paula, his longtime girlfriend, to have many more kids — enough to “build a soccer team.”
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The name “Arthur” has special significance. Embiid’s brother Arthur was struck by a truck and tragically died at 13 years old in 2014.
"When you talk about my life, you have to talk about my brother Arthur," Embiid wrote in a piece published in The Players' Tribune this year. "There’s no telling my story without him.
"I think we all got that one person in our life who is just always giving off positive energy. That person who is just fun to be around, you know? And who is always rooting for you, no matter what. For me, that was Arthur. Everything always comes back to him. Even if you asked me to go back to the very beginning of this crazy journey from Cameroon to the NBA, it would start with Arthur.”
However many kids Embiid and De Paula end up having, Arthur is clearly a meaningful name for the first one.