Jt Thor, Wenyen Gabriel, Majok Deng of South Sudan, and Arnaldo Toro and Davon Reed of Puerto Rico in action, in Olympics 2024.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Kigali, Rwanda: When South Sudan’s young basketball team members took to the court for an exhibition game against America’s basketball royalty, there were few expectations that they could hold on against the likes of LeBron James and Stephen Curry. Then they lost by just one point, 101-100, stunning not only their loyal followers but also the team’s players, who had grown up revering the NBA stars.
The South Sudanese will face the United States again Wednesday, this time at the Paris Olympics, and with the Americans now on notice, the odds are distinctly against the African team. But for many of their fans in Africa and elsewhere, that is beside the point.
The way they see it, it is a bit of a miracle that a team of refugees and their descendants, whose home country is just 13 years old and has suffered through devastating wars, made it to the Olympics at all.
Despite having no place of their own to train, the team won the only slot open to Africa for men’s basketball. They already beat the odds by not only coming within a hair of winning against the Americans — James made the winning layup with just 8 seconds remaining — but also by beating Puerto Rico in their first match of the Games in Paris.
“South Sudan and its people are known all over the world now,” said Aninyesi Tereza Mark, a 33-year-old university lecturer in the South Sudanese capital, Juba. “We are very proud of them, and we are happy.”
South Sudan is the world’s youngest country. It won its freedom from neighboring Sudan only in 2011 and since then, has suffered through a civil war that has claimed the lives of some 400,000 people and displaced more than 4 million. While a shaky peace deal has been in place since 2018, inter-communal violence persists. Poverty and corruption are endemic.
None of the members of the basketball team — nicknamed the Bright Stars — live in the country; many of their parents fled its wars before and after independence.
Still, their accomplishments have offered a modicum of hope to those who have remained behind.
Mark, who has been watching the games with her four children and brother, said, “Our image is not positive outside” the country, but “they made it to the top.”
South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, weighed in, gushing about the near-win against the American team and posting the score on social platform X along with this message: “Your impressive performance has inspired many open-minded people across the globe to get to know that South Sudan as a country has more to offer the world.”
The team’s road to Paris was not an easy one.
Although it was created after independence, South Sudan’s men’s basketball team only began its dizzying ascent in 2019, after Luol Deng, a former NBA player, became the president of the South Sudan Basketball Federation. Deng, whose family fled to Egypt in 1990 during the war of independence and later moved to Britain, used his own money to fund and corral the team.
In 2021, he was joined in the endeavor by Royal Ivey, who was then an assistant coach for the Brooklyn Nets. In an interview, Ivey said he had called Deng to propose working as an assistant coach, but Deng offered him the head coaching job instead, and he accepted.
He was attracted by the idea of helping South Sudanese people put aside their differences and nurturing new talent.
“We are blazing a new path for the nation,” said Ivey, now an assistant coach with the Houston Rockets. “Through sports, you can bring a country together, heal, give hope and inspire.”
Together, Deng and Ivey began to bring together players of South Sudanese descent.
In some places, the only practice venues they could get featured concrete courts with no gyms and, in one case, a flooded field. Many players, spread across the globe in pro leagues, brought vastly different styles.
With no home court in South Sudan, the team assembled before the Olympics to train at the BK Arena in the Rwandan capital, Kigali. When the arena lights went off for a short time on a recent afternoon, some players laughed, saying it was par for the course, given their previous experiences.
“I have never been a part of something where you have to travel to a different country just to have some resources,” Ivey said. “This whole thing has been humbling.”
Still, over time, Ivey and several players said they managed to build camaraderie. Their big break came in September, when the team qualified for the Olympics by beating Angola at the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup in the Philippines.
That did not stop the naysayers.
Before and after the Olympics warm-up match against the United States, two former NBA players from the United States, Paul Pierce and Gilbert Arenas, belittled the team members, suggesting, among other things, that they were not tall enough to win.
“Almost lost to some Africans,” Arenas said dismissively after the nail-biter of a game.
The comments generated widespread public condemnation, including from Deng, who said the remarks were “disrespectful and cruel” and “showed misinformation and a lack of research.” The two players later apologized for their comments.
Although some team members have been in the NBA, none currently play for an NBA team, and many of them have gone undrafted. Some play in leagues in countries including Australia, Canada, China and Serbia. The roster includes rising stars like Khaman Maluach, a 17-year-old, 7-foot-2 player who grew up in Uganda and is an incoming freshman at Duke University.
In interviews, team members admitted to challenges, including sloppy play when new athletes joined. But they said they learned to embrace their different playing styles, with a goal of making their homeland proud.
“I am here not just to be a basketball player but also to be a brother,” said Carlik Jones, a point guard who recorded a historic triple-double during the friendly game against the U.S. and scored 19 points against Puerto Rico.
“It’s more than just basketball.”