Nigerian basketball icon, Maai Ujiri has opined that lack of adequate facilities and poor quality of infrastructure have limited Africa’s chances of unearthing huge talents for the sport.
Sports247.ng reports that Ujiri, who is National Basketball Association (NBA) of America’s first African-born vice-president, is also not happy that country’s in the continent have not been able to key into business angles to building on the future of the giants’ game.
Ujiri recounted how his passion for basketball started in a country where the focus is predominantly on football, but said the big zeal for slamming and dunking kept on growing in him and never abated.
He also shot his back to how many of his friends and passersby mocked him whenever he tried his basketball skills at the backstreets.
Along the line, Ujiri only picked up a basketball at 13, but he would go on to play professionally until he discovered the joy in a coaching job.
He is now mixing coaching with scouring for talents, and Ujiri says the African in him took him back to the continent, and he is now looking for the next big basketball star to flaunt in years to come.
Ujiri recalled: “I was playing in lower leagues in Europe and making a couple of thousand of dollars a month, where is this taking me?
“I don’t want this. Luckily for me, I fell into the coaching and the junior national team, the low gig of scouting and I got a break in the NBA.
“I started scouting African players. We are looking at those long arms, we are looking at speed, we are looking at skill.
“I started trying to learn what the real NBA skill is and what you’re trying to find. And that’s a difficult thing too.
“We lack the facilities in Africa. And so, it doesn’t give the kids a chance. I say that there is talent in Africa walking everywhere, it’s a gold mine.
“They need to see people like us, so they believe in themselves. At the end of the day, in my heart, you’re a scout.
“One day you want to say, I found this Mutombo, or Pascal Siakam. You want that great player, you want to find somebody that’s just going to come and kill it.”
