I think we need to start learning to pronounce a lot of the names of the guys who play on the Angolan National team. Angola will be in the same pool as the US national team in the Olympics. It will be easy for a lot of people to root for the US, especially because (my boy) Kobe Bryant is in the squad. I think though that basketball players, fans and administrators all across Africa need to get behind Angola. We witnessed their play during the Afribasket tournament earlier in the year, and it has been clear since then that the rest of Africa can learn a lot from the Angolan Federation in terms of developing, sustaining and growing the sport.
Out of all the countries in Africa who are still trying to make their mark in basketball, South Africa is perhaps the slowest to take their place. At this point, we should be ranked in the top 5 and regarded as a power house in Africa. We’ve had some of the best mentors working with our national team but they never seemed to have good support from the federation. We’ve had Sam Vincent as coach, he went on to coach the Nigerian national team and served as head coach to the Charlotte Bobcats; I don’t know how many other teams in Africa have had that opportunity. Myke Scholl assisted a lot with the national team, a lot of people saw what he was capable of when he coached the And1 Soldiers; he was even instrumental with placing some of our players in different colleges overseas. He since moved to Detroit to work as their African scout, word has it that he recently took up an appointed to coach in college.
We can go over this matter over and over; we can even breakdown the core roster of our national team, but it will not render much help. Right now we are in a good position that can create a new and better foundation for the game. We have a few leagues that are running and I think that administrators have a chance to package teams and the leagues and pitch them to different companies. Basketball is a very clean sport and I don’t think that companies will have to worry about their Public Relations when they associate themselves with the sport. We have seen how soccer players waste themselves in drugs and alcoholism, resulting in botched endorsements; but even on top of that, companies still inject more money into soccer. Why can’t that be the case in basketball? Why can’t Lesego Molebatsi or Quinton Denyssen be the face of certain products or companies? Lesego already did an advert for Nedbank and it would be nice to have marketing people line up for him like the girls “might” normally do. Basketball has a lot of ambassadors who are not really known as basketball players, Akin and Jonathan are perfect examples; I think that we need to try as much as possible to be vocal about our “other” lives as ball players. Wits Alumni already have a BMW logo on their strip; let’s get more companies to also back up other teams.
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