The history of basketball in Nigeria goes as far back as the late 1950s when Walid Zabadne served as the first basketball coach to train Nigerians.
At the time, Nigeria’s only basketball court was situated in the Syrian Club. Walid Zabadne continued teaching young Nigerians to become basketballers and when Nigeria’s basketball federation was organized, he took them to several basketball competitions across Africa.
In view of his role as the pioneer of basketball in Nigeria, Walid Zabadne has been deemed “father of Nigerian basketball’’. Also worthy of note is that Zabadne was later made the president of the Nigerian basketball federation.
Nigeria’s national basketball team joined FIBA in 1964. Recently, the team has enjoyed success, due to an increasing amount of talents from Nigeria as well as an orchestrated recruitment of American college and professional players of Nigerian descent. A team dominated by Nigerian-Americans qualified for the 2006 FIBA World Championship, marking only the second time in the country’s history that they qualified to the FIBA World Cup.
The national basketball team of Nigeria usually play their home games at the 3,000-capacity Indoor Sports Hall in Lagos.
Eight players on the team that represented Nigeria at the 2009 FIBA AfroBasket tournament were born in the United States. Nigeria also qualified to the 2012 Summer Olympics.
2006 FIBA World Championship
Nigeria took part in the 2006 FIBA World Championship in Japan. They were drawn in Group A with Argentina, France, Lebanon, Serbia and Montenegro, and Venezuela. They surprisingly finished third in Group A, then were narrowly defeated by Germany in the Round of 16. Overall they finished 14th, as they achieved the same record as the defending world champion Serbia and Montenegro.
2012 Summer Olympics
Nigeria competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics. They finished the group play with a 1–4 record, with their victory coming against Tunisia, making the first ever Olympic game the first ever Olympic victory.
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