Nigeria’s men’s basketball national team, D’Tigers’ head coach, Abdulraham Muhammad was left stunned by the absence of questions from journalists minutes after his squad picked a ticket to this year’s continental championship in Angola, and resorted to asking why no one made inquiries about his players’ achievement.
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Sports247 reports that the Nigerian squad pulled off a dramatic and unrelenting cruise to the 2025 AfroBasket with three straight victories during last weekend’s qualifiers in Lybia, but Abdulrahman was surprised that none of the media personalities present at the venue deemed it fit to ask him how the feat became possible.
The former Gombe Bulls club tactician, who once had a summer coaching training attachment with Utah Jazz in USA’s National Basketball Association (NBA), inferred that the Nigerian team left all observers shell shocked and short of words with their sterling results in Lybia.
A 89-82 demolition of the hosts was followed by a 72-62 trouncing of Uganda and 78-62 maul of Cape Verde, thereby taking D’Tigers back to the African Basketball Championship (AfroBasket), where Abdulrahman will have his debut as the head coach, after serving as assistant gaffer at the 2004, 2005 and 2006 editions as well as for the FIBA World Championship qualifiers in 2009 and 2023.
Abdulraham Muhammad is now already setting his eyes on how to get the better of defending champions, Tunisia, at this year’s edition, which is scheduled to hold from August 12-24 in Angola, but the soft-spoken gaffer pointed out that he would love getting questions from media men on order to know areas of weaknesses, where he needs to work on his team’s set up.
“Why is it that there are no questions from you guys?” Abdulrahman asked journalists in the mixed zone a few minutes after his side’s victory over Cape Verde, which confirmed their 100% surge at the qualifiers in Tripoli.
“You don’t have anything to say about our win, about how we are playing, or about Nigeria? You can ask any question, not necessarily about basketball. You can ask us what motivated us to get fired up and brought us back in the third or fourth quarter. You can ask our players, who I thought did an excellent job that set the tone for victory,” Abdulrahman offered.
He reckoned that the lack of inquiries from the media simply meant everyone was not surprised with his team’s performance during the competition, but the former captain-turned-tactician pointed out that there is always a need to ask questions after each game, in order to know which holes to plug ahead of the next one.
