Suns players with ties to Africa bonded on revamped roster
As the revamped Phoenix Suns roster looks to build team chemistry during the preseason, it helps that five of them have direct ties to African nations, which has helped them bond.
Josh Okogie and newcomers Chimezie Metu and Udoka Azubuike are Nigerian. The other two African players are 7-footer Bol Bol from South Sudan, who was signed in the off-season, and Ish Wainright, who played on the Ugandan national team last summer.
They are part of the team’s 19-man preseason roster. Okogie and Wainright were with the team last season along with Bismack Biyombo of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who no longer is with the Suns after becoming a free agent during the offseason.
All of the current Suns’ players discussed their African bond at the team’s Media Day on Monday.
“We talked about it I think last week about being in Paris and whatnot and they all asked me what I was doing,” Bol said. “We just talked about basketball in Africa, just about how (South) Sudan’s the best and whatnot, and I think it’s pretty cool that there’s five of us. I think that’s pretty important.”
Bol referred to playing for his native country South Sudan, which qualified for 2024 Paris Olympics during the FIBA World Cup this past summer.
He was raised in Connecticut and Kansas after leaving his homeland when he was a child with his family, including his late 7-foot-7 father Manute Bol, one of the NBA’s tallest players ever and a legendary shot-blocker. The Bols are from South Sudan’s Dinka tribe, a Nilotic ethnic group and one of the world’s tallest populations. Some other players from the Dinka who’ve played in the league include Luol Deng, Thon Maker, and Boston Celtics big Wenyen Gabriel.
The diversity of Phoenix players who’ve represented their homeland during international competition has raised a new level of respect among them.
“It’s just that respect because I played against Metu last summer, as a matter of fact in Chigali (Zambia),” Wainright said. “But it’s just a lot of respect that we got three Nigerian guys on the team. We got guys that represent the United States. We got Bol Bol, but then also we got Yuta (Watanabe from Japan), so it’s a lot of respect. Guys are actually taking their time out of the summer to go over there to play on their national team. We’re extremely grateful, extremely blessed to do that.”
Metu was born in Los Angeles but played on the Nigerian national team in the 2019 World Cup with Okogie, who hails from Lagos, Nigeria and was raised in Georgia. Metu played on that team again this offseason. Metu and Okogie were both drafted in 2018 by the San Antonio Spurs and Minnesota Timberwolves out of USC and Georgia Tech.
Like Okogie, Azubuike is from Lagos and attended high school in Jacksonville where he became a top recruit, and helped lead Kansas to the 2018 Final Four as its starting center.
But like many Africans, his first love and first sport before basketball was soccer.
Many of African-born players are converted into basketball players, and have been scouted through the league’s Basketball Without Borders program in South Africa.
From the provisions of coaching basketball fundamentals at the youth through college levels, applying their lateral quickness and stellar coordinated footwork from soccer, many Africanborn players such as last season’s MVP Joel Embiid, Hall of Famers Hakeem Olajuwon and Dikembe Mutumbo were developed into the sport’s elite players.
“I think it helps a lot. Growing up in Nigeria or being from Africa, our first sport is always soccer,” Azubuike said. “It’s less expensive. Everybody can play soccer. All you gotta do is have a ball, it doesn’t matter what type of ball you have. I just find an open field and play,
whereas in terms of basketball you’re actually in a basketball court, you know, the rim and everything.
“So I kind of feel it helps with us being able to learn the fundamentals, and over there in Africa we watch a lot of European soccer. We see them play and all that, so we try to emulate the stuff they do, and for us it’s just the footwork. Then you try to transitioning from there to basketball, I wouldn’t it’s easy, but it’s like we’re not learning it from the jump. We know, like, OK, this is what we need to do and that’s what we need to do, so I feel like it kind of helped a lot,” he added.
Phoenix’s African players might be together in the Arizona desert, but they feel right at home away from home together on this roster.
“The connection’s great,” Okogie said. “It’s actually crazy because when you talk to somebody that’s from where you’re from, it doesn’t matter at what point in your life that you meet them, it’s like y’all have known each other forever.
“I’ve spent more time with Udoka in these last two or three weeks than anybody else on the team. You probably wouldn’t even be able to picture that. … And Bol, being able to connect with him just knowing he’s from the Motherland as well has been dope,” he said “I’ve actually talked with him about where he was from. He told me, and I forgot what he said, but it doesn’t really take away from the fact that I consider him like my brother just because we’re repping the Motherland.”