South Sudanese basketball player Luol Deng is currently averaging better than 17 points per game for the Chicago Bulls. The seven foot seven inch Manute Bol not once but twice blocked 15 shots in a game. But due to a birth defect, he couldn't straighten his fingers and his offense followed predictably. He actually ended up with more shots blocked than points scored before going back to Sudan to join the fight. He died last year at age 47, poor, but with an admirable record of humanitarian work and with his image indelibly branded onto the brains of many a jump-shooter.
Times have changed since the league's introduction to East Africa's largest and tallest ethnic group, the Dinka. When Bol joined the Washington Bullets in 1985, Stephanie was a newborn
and the worst of the civil war, not to mention the East African famine of 1988-89 was still to come.
Now, South Sudan is no longer the international equivalent of Northeast Louisiana State--a directional entity only tangentially related to Sport--but a sovereign nation. And it can play sports in peace. South Sudan will no doubt have Olympians in London next year, and it has a national basketball team.
Which brings us to today. Saturday's 3-1 soccer loss to Tusker FC of Kenya was not officially recorded because South Sudan hasn't gained FIFA membership. I don't know how international basketball recognition works, but being a fan myself, I'd like to think that, unlike the fakers and the bureaucrats in the soccer world, a win is a win and a loss is a loss.
This evening, at the basketball court behind Juba One Girl's Primary School, a set of risers, some loudspeakers, plastic chairs galore, journalists, and a few NBA employees with South Sudan independence shirts greeted the national team as it tipped off against Uganda.
Juba One Girl's Primary School is right across the street from ALARM's offices. I didn't leave the office until I started hearing cheers, so I had to stand kind of at the back, on the seat of one of the plastic chairs. What I saw was impressive, but it did not yet give me visions of Madison Square Garden. The new uniforms were sparkling white, with modest green and red lettering and decorations down the side of the shorts. The team was, I believe, well-coached. They knew their strengths, and were aggressive enough to go hard at the basket and draw fouls from the shorter Ugandans. The fact that the Ugandans obligingly gave them shows that they were not well coached, since the South Sudanese players didn't have a great field goal percentage, even at point blank range. It was 33-46 Uganda when I left at the half.
Oddly for a nation known for its height, the best player on either side might have been South Sudan's point guard. Of course, he was still at least 6'5, but he had a good handle, good hustle, and a great sense of the court. I was convinced when I saw him understand that a teammate's pass would be stolen before it even happened and take off behind a Ugandan player, slapping his fast break layup against the backboard with no one else around. In fact, all the players had solid instincts. It's just that not all of them were basketball players. The South Sudanese are not showboaters or selfish players. They're good passers, but some are a little uncoordinated, and possibly too used to the marathon that is life to commit the short term effort involved in drawing a five second violation.
So South Sudan will not come out of this week unscathed on the basketball court, but the future looks bright, as this NYT article catalogs, complete with awesome pictures. It may not happen next year, but some time in the next decade, expect to see another Deng or Duany or Jok or Dut coming to a court near you.
Photo of the basketball court across the street via this article from asahi.com
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