‘A journey bigger than basketball’: South Sudan dreams of Olympic glory
a Huge cheers erupt as South Sudan take the lead against Great Britain for the first time just before half-time. Spectators dressed in black and white T-shirts jump to their feet, wave flags and dance in the stands of the Copper Box arena in London.
Last Thursday’s basketball game was one of the last warm-up games South Sudan will play before the team begins its quest for Olympic gold in Paris on Sunday.
South Sudan, ranked 33rd in the world, is one of two African countries to qualify for basketball at the Olympics – the other is Nigeria in the women’s competition. It is a remarkable achievement for the world’s youngest country, which gained independence in 2011 after years of civil war and is still plagued by conflict, hunger and poverty.
Santina Deng, 63, who has travelled from Birmingham to watch the match, stands up and smiles. She came to the UK in 1985 because of the civil war in Sudan. “It’s a big thing that we’re going to the Olympics,” she says.
“It’s a morale booster. The country is still going through difficulties and this brings us together.”
The team, nicknamed Bright Stars, was founded in 2011, but its rise to fame on the world stage only began in 2019, when former NBA All-Star Luol Deng, who represented Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics, became president of the South Sudan Basketball Federation.
Deng, who left Sudan with his family in 1990 at the age of five, grew up in Egypt and then London before moving to the U.S. to pursue a career in basketball. He was instrumental in putting the team together, including convincing players and the head coach, Royal Ivey, an American former NBA player, to come on board.
South Sudan has some of the tallest people in the world, a big advantage for basketball, Deng says. But the country has no resources and no indoor basketball courts. The team is made up of players who left the country as children or were born as refugees.
One of the players, 17-year-old 7-foot-1 Khaman Maluach, whose family left Sudan for Uganda, first attended a Deng basketball camp in the East African country when he was 13.
In April 2021 he won a full scholarship to NBA Academy Africaan elite basketball training center in Senegal. In the fall, he will go to Duke University in the US and is tipped as a big star.
“The first time I went home [after a tournament]and seeing a lot of people in one place, the fan base and people enjoying what we were doing, was really inspiring,” Maluach said. “It made me keep working hard so I could make my people back home proud.”
Deng added: “For all of us, it’s a journey bigger than basketball. As a young boy in the NBA, I knew that a lot of young South Sudanese kids and refugees around the world were following my story. Now it’s even more incredible when you do it as a group.
“What we are achieving for the African continent is enormous; sport can uplift and motivate an entire nation.”
The teams path to qualifying for the Olympic Games was bumpy. In 2020, players tested positive for Covid-19 before one of the African qualifying tournaments, forcing them to withdraw. They were given a place in another tournament, when Algeria withdrew, and made it to the World Cup. There, the team defeated Angola, 11-time African champions, to become the lowest-ranked team to qualify for the Olympics since 2004.
“The response is amazing,” Deng said. “Not only everyone in the country, but the whole continent – all our diaspora and the refugees are motivated to see the positive direction.”
Back in the arena in London, Great Britain, who failed to qualify for Paris, are making a comeback. The game goes to last playwith South Sudan successfully defending Great Britain’s final attack and winning 84-81.
Chris Grant, chairman of the British Basketball Federation, who was at the game, called South Sudan’s trajectory “astonishing” and one that could help transform the sport’s fortunes in Africa.
He says: “I’m equally interested in the power shift off the court. Emerging countries and the infrastructure they build around the game, the way they change their governance and engage with it, will be welcome for world basketball because it promotes diversity in leadership, which should reflect diversity on the court.”
A few days later, South Sudan took on the USA, the reigning Olympic champion and 16-time gold medalist. The USA had to fight back from a 16-point deficit to pull off a dramatic 101-100 victory and avoid one of the biggest upsets in basketball history.
The teams meet again in the Olympic group stage on Wednesday.
In an interview After the game, South Sudanese player Wenyen Gabriel, who previously played for the Los Angeles Lakers, said: “A lot of people around the world don’t know what South Sudan is.
“We are a group of refugees who have come together for a few weeks to do our best, and play against some of the best players ever,” he says, adding: “Hoops in Africa is for the future. It is only a matter of time before the next generation is built.”