from misery to enterprise, the national team that wasn’t there – Corriere.it

too good to ignore the story of the basketball players of South Sudan. too beautiful and above all condenses a mix of opposing facts and emotions: the qualification obtained at the final stage of Basketball World Cup 2023 thanks to victory in Alexandria in Egypt, in the African concentration, against Senegal (a nation that boasts a solid tradition among baskets); the precariousness of the conditions in which these kids find themselves; the harsh scenario of a country that boasts (so to speak) a couple of negative records at a social level; the efforts of those who helped them achieve what we will call the miracle on the parquet.

South Sudan took the pass well in advance for the final phase of the world tournament, scheduled from 25 August to 10 September between Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Let us recall that the promotion of the championship has already been achieved – in turn before the end of the qualifying tournaments – by Gianmarco Pozzecco’s Italy: perhaps one of the opponents that the urn of the draw will assign will be precisely that of these guys from the Continent Black. The drawing will take place in Manila on April 29.

Meanwhile, here is a summary of an extraordinary enterprise of the Bright Stars (shining stars), signed first of all by a irrepressible player responding to the name dthe Nuni Omot: 26 points, 8 rebounds and 4 assists for him, forward in the G-League (the development league tied to the NBA) with the Westchester Knicks. The basketball identity card, first of all: South Sudan sends the most recently established national basketball team onto the field; indeed been formed
in 2011 following independence from Sudan, which cost 2 and a half million dead.

We are also talking about the poorest state on Planet Earth and the one with the worst human development index, added that 94% of the population lives in villages. A detail that is not negligible or even accessory in this story: given that we live mainly in villages, sports halls are something simply unknown. So matches in South Sudan do not exist because there is no place to dispute them. Not only: from 2013 to 2020 no team starter lived in South Sudan due to the civil war. And as many as four players are orphaned by war, while two are born into the world in refugee camps in Kenya.

The growth of the group took place first of all on a human level, but also from a technical point of view the obvious leap forward: the qualification was in fact achieved with 9 victories in 10 games. The president of the Basketball Federation, and the one who created and recruited all the players, Luol Deng, a former professional for 15 seasons in the NBA but also an English national (he also participated in the London Games) after his naturalization: after having been a pillar of the Chicago Bulls (2004-2014), he played for the Cleveland Cavaliers (a few months), the Miami Heat (2014-2016), the Los Angeles Lakers (2016-2018) and finally the Minnesota Timberwolves (2018-2019). Last August Deng paid for a trip for the team to the capital Juba from his own pocket. They arrived at the airport 7,000 people who welcomed the players as national heroes. Many of them, taken aback by the affection, cried. For some, it was an opportunity to see family members again after about nine years.

The link with the NBA, however, does not concern only Luol Deng but also the coach: the holder of the role in fact Royal Iveyin turn a former player and today assistant to David Vaughn at the Brooklyn Nets. However, the professional club has not been very smart and helpful: in fact, it has denied Ivey permission to participate in the commitments in this qualifying window. Cos Deng went on the bench, one and two: president and coach.

a business within a business which will be engraved in history as much as the memory of the pioneer of Sudanese basketball: the late Manute Bol, father of Bol Bol, today teammate of Paolo Banchero in the Orlando Magic; Luol Deng’s mentor was Manute. One last curiosity about South Sudan? Here it is: Australian basketball has become an enclave of its players, after many have fled to Oceania because of the war.