A new dawn, but basketball has a lot of work to do in SA
BASKETBALL got a hiding from the Soweto derby yesterday as Africa’s first NBA game only served as a reminder that the sport still has some way to go before it earns football-like fervour on the continent.
The “sold out” game, won by Chris Paul’s Team World over Luol Deng’s Team Africa, battled to fill the Ellis Park Arena. The game was a treat (Denver Nuggets’ Kenneth “Manimal” Faried was at his cannibalistic best) but the NBA and Basketball without Borders have some work to do.
Despite some of the early efforts to get basketball going in South Africa coming two decades ago, the sport hasn’t yet picked up. It is like selling stick-fighting to Americans.
In 2013, the year sports minister Fikile Mbalula launched a 12-franchise Basketball National League, Basketball SA didn’t have a committee structure or elected officials.
Its financial state was like a dumping site. They owed almost R6-million to debtors and some officials had allegedly misused funds. They were removed and the federation was put under SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee administration.
Paul, Giannis “The Greek Freak” Antetokounmpo, Gasol brothers Marc and Pau, and Deng didn’t just show ball control on another level last night but also a new dawn.
“Basketball Without Borders (BWB) have been coming here for the past 12 years but it took us seven years to get to the point where we had a sold-out NBA game in SA,” said Mbalula.
"This has reinforced our own initiatives to raise enthusiasm for the game. Basketball in SA still needs corporate support because it relies largely on public finance.
“Nike, Ford and SuperSport partnered to bring these guys here and it didn’t cost the department of sport a cent. That tells you how big the NBA brand is.
“If we play regularly, move onto other provinces and run a fully fledged league, there is no doubt it will be among the mainstream sports. We are going to have school basketball leagues in the future.”
This week a pre-season and regular season NBA game was mooted, which could bring the likes of Lebron James, Derrick Rose and Dwayne Wade to SA.
NBA Africa vice president and managing director Amadou Gallo Fall, who championed the cause to bring the game to Africa, said they can’t lose this momentum.
“From our initial BWB camp in 2003 we decided to open an office here in Johannesburg to focus on growing the sport and using it to impact young lives across Africa,” Fall said.
“The NBA listened. This was in line with their goal to take the NBA experience to fans around the world.”