Canada’s Melvin Ejim is half a world away for the World Cup, but he wasn’t going to miss the birth of his second son,
In the hours before Canada took the floor for their opening game of the FIBA World Cup, Melvin Ejim was glued to his iPhone, watching a beautiful scene play out half a world away.
His wife, Samantha, gave birth to their second son, Miles, at 9:20 p.m. Saturday in Georgia — or 9:20 the next morning in China, right before Ejim had to join his Canadian teammates for pre-game meetings.
“It was just really loving, amazing experience. It was a great birth. I literally watched it all from my iPhone,” Ejim said with a wide smile.
The 28-year-old, who’s a cornerstone of the national program and one of the team’s most versatile players, had nine points, six rebounds and a pair of steals hours later in Canada’s 108-92 loss Sunday to Australia.
Ejim and Canada’s coaching staff knew his baby would arrive during the six weeks he’d be on the road.
Samantha’s contractions started during Saturday’s practice, and he warned coach Nick Nurse he’d likely be on his phone a bit more, and eventually sneak away to be with his wife via FaceTime.
“(Nurse) said, ‘Absolutely. Whatever you need.’ Obviously, there is the game of basketball and then there’s the game of life and this is an important part of that,” said Ejim. “He was completely supportive of me and whatever decision I made and luckily it didn’t interfere with anything that we had going on over here.”
Nurse could relate. His son Rocky was born during the Raptors’ championship run.
Ejim, who met his wife in his freshman year at Iowa State, managed to get a bit of sleep Saturday night, and woke up at 6 a.m. to find his wife was in the pool — they’d decided on a home birth — surrounded by family members, four girlfriends, and their midwife.
Six hours after Miles arrived, Ejim was on the court for Canada’s first game.
“Went into the game, tried to play hard, tried to do what we could,” Ejim said. “But (Samantha’s) great. She’s unbelievable. She made it easy for me to come out here and play while she is taking care of stuff on the home front.”
The couple has another son Deuce, who’s three. Miles was named after Miles Morales, the Marvel Comics character.