NBA 2022/23: Reinforcing Africa’s Pre-Eminence

The latest National Basketball Association (NBA) season, the 76th in its storied history, ended on June 12, 2023. The Denver Nuggets, led by two-time Most Valuable Player, Nikola Jokić of Serbia, won their maiden championship. In defeating the Miami Heat in five games, the Nuggets outlasted a long list of teams who came into the season with championship aspirations.

The Finals was largely predictable and uneventful. Going into the postseason, the Nuggets had finished as the top team in the Western Conference. They proceeded to steamroller the Minnesota Timberwolves, Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Lakers on their way to the Finals. They hardly needed to break sweat.

Conversely, the Heat put up shocks for the ages to get to the Finals. They finished eighth in the Eastern Conference (needing a Play-in victory to get the spot), then surprised everyone by defeating title favourites, Milwaukee Bucks; stopped the run of resurgent New York Knicks; and followed it all up by beating the Boston Celtics in seven games. However, they had little left in the tank when they got to the Finals and the Nuggets beat them easily.

For Africa, the just-ended season further cements the continent’s place amongst the very best in the game. Indeed, one can now make the argument that Africa provides more talent to the NBA than any other continent outside of America. The facts bear this out. Start with the best players during the season. The Most Valuable Player award had three finalists: Cameroon’s Joel Embiid, Greek-Nigerian Giannis Antetokoumpo (Adetokunbo), and Serbia’s Nikola Jokic. All three put up performances and numbers that will stay long in the memory. The award went to Cameroon’s Joel Embiid. So of the last five MVPs in the NBA, three have gone to players with African pedigree (with Giannis having won two of the others).

Furthermore, both Embiid and Antetokoumpo made the NBA First Team selection for the season, a team of the best five players in their positions during the season. Much earlier in the season, Antetokoumpo was one of the two captains (the other being Lebron James) of the All-Star Team selections. He was the top vote-getter in the Eastern Conference in the annual polls. Indeed, while his team lost out early in the play-offs, Antetokoumpo continued to lay down the marker as the best player in the NBA. He led Milwaukee to the best position in the league and his injury in the first game of the play-offs largely accounted for their failure to make progress.

Giannis as Captain of NBA All Star Selection

Who were the other notable performers from Africa? Well, it turns out that many of the 30 teams in the NBA had one or two Africans who made memorable impact during the season. Miami Heat got to the Finals with Nigeria’s Bam Adebayo, Gabe Vincent, Victor Oladipo as mainstays. Adebayo, who plays for the United States, and Vincent who plays for D’Tigers of Nigeria, were crucial in the postseason. The Champions, Denver Nuggets, had the young Zeke Nnaji on its roster, meaning both finalists had Nigerians kitting up for them.

Bam Adebayo and Gabe Vincent, both of Nigerian ancestry, in the NBA finals

In total, more than 35 players in the NBA this past season have at least one parent from Africa, including Deandre Ayton (Nigeria) of Phoenix Suns; OG Anunoby (Nigeria), Precious Achunwa (Nigeria) and Pascal Siakam (Cameroon), all of Toronto Raptors; Josh Okogie (Nigeria) of the Timberwolves; the young and promising Jonathan Kuminga (Congo) of Golden State Warriors; Onyeka Okongwu (Nigeria) of the Atlanta Hawks; and Ayo Dosunmu (Nigeria) of the Chicago Bulls.

Undoubtedly, Embiid’s MVP title in the just-concluded season was the historic high point for players of African origin in the NBA as he became the first player in NBA history with 50 points, 10 boards, five assists and five blocks in a game since blocks became an official stat in the 1973-74 season. This remarkable triumph has made him the second African to be awarded MVP title after Nigeria’s Hakeem Olajuwon in 1994.

Embiid was born in Yaoundé, Cameroon, to Thomas Embiid, a colonel in the Cameroon military and his wife, Christine. He started playing basketball at age 15, modelling his game after NBA Hall of Fame centre Nigeria-born Hakeem Olajuwon. His journey to the NBA was rather meteoric. Early 2011, his uncle Didier Yanga, a former basketball player with Forces Armées et Police (FAP), who was on vacation in Cameroon from Ivory Coast where he had been leading a basketball team, saw the young Embiid. Yanga later introduced the lanky boy to his childhood friend Joel Touomou, the first Cameroonian to have played in the NCAA. Touomou was an international scout at the Idiana Pacers then.

Mr Joe Touomou with the teenage prodigy, Joel Embiid in the dusty streets of Yaoundé in 2012

Touomou who was so impressed with the lads raw talent immediately registered him in his academy (Kosangwe Academy), formed in 2003. It was after that season that Embiid was selected and invited for the Basketball Without Borders programme in Johannesburg from Luc Mbah a Moute’s camp in Yaoundé. Mbah a Moute, a former NBA player, played for Cameroon national basketball team.

In 2012, Embiid moved to the United States at age 16 to devote himself to becoming a professional basketball player with the help of Mbah a Moute, who enrolled him at his alma mater, Montverde Academy, but the young Embiid relocated after his first year due to a lack of playing time. He then attended The Rock School, a Christian academy, in Gainesville, Florida where he made his breakthrough.

The highly-elated Embiid told reporters after receiving his award: “I have always felt like I was a role model, especially to my Cameroonian and African people. Just looking at my story they can look at it and be like ‘wow, he did it.’”

So what does the future hold? Going by recent trends, the basketball talent factory of Africa will continue to expand and its impact even more evident. This is why the NBA is increasing its development footprints and other investments on the continent. Joel Embiid was raw when plucked from the streets of Cameroon. In barely a decade, he has climbed to the top of the NBA food chain and is now widely recognised as one of the best players in the game. Many more of his likes abound in Africa, begging for the door of opportunity to open. In his story and that of the other stars of Africa currently playing in the NBA, they have hope to hang on.