‘I realized that this was bigger than basketball’: Former NBA All-Star Luol Deng on the rise of South Sudan’s basketball team

CNN

By Amanda Davies and Sam Joseph, CNN

(CNN) — It was a dream debut on the Olympic basketball stage for the world’s youngest country.

South Sudan’s men’s basketball team defeated Puerto Rico 90-79 in Paris on Sunday in its first ever appearance at the Games, but the result meant more than just picking up two points in Group C. For South Sudan Basketball Federation President Luol Deng, it was the culmination of everything that he and the team had worked so hard to achieve.

“When the national anthem was sung, you know, it just gave me goosebumps, and I realized that this was bigger than basketball,” Deng told CNN Sport’s Amanda Davies. “And you know that the support is going to be there.

“This is really a credit to our fans who supported us from day one. And now, we have such a huge following and huge (fanbase) that we really believe that it’s so inspiring because of the fans. The energy and everything that they’re bringing is inspiring everybody else to pay attention to it.”

The road to representation

Deng is a former two-time NBA All-Star and spent 15 years in the league with the likes of the Chicago Bulls, Miami Heat and Los Angeles Lakers. He was born in Wau, in what is now South Sudan, before the country’s independence. His family was displaced due to the Second Sudanese Civil War, moving to Egypt when Deng was a child before the family was granted political asylum in the UK, arriving in London, England.

He moved to the US at 14 to pursue a basketball career, going on to play college hoops at Duke before being drafted seventh overall by Chicago in 2004. He represented Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics in London.

After his playing career concluded in 2019, Deng became heavily involved with allowing the country in which he was born to tell its story and be represented on the international stage. He currently serves as an assistant coach to the team alongside his role as president, having previously worked as head coach and player liaison.

South Sudan officially gained independence from Sudan in 2011 following a referendum, making it the world’s newest widely-recognized state. It has since experienced a civil war of its own that officially ended in 2018 and is listed as one of the least developed countries in the world by the United Nations.

Like Deng, several of the players on the Olympic roster are refugees who were forced to leave South Sudan or were born elsewhere after their families had been displaced.

“We didn’t just randomly put a team together. I’ve known a lot of these players since they were so young, and I’ve kept up with a lot of other players that I didn’t know, but they were on my radar,” he told CNN. “And before I took over the president of the federation, I did imagine, ‘What if those guys committed to play for our nation?’ And this is the result because it’s all come together.

“These guys believed that it could happen, and whoever didn’t believe in the beginning,
that’s fine. We got them on board with us because of, you know, what we’ve been able to do, and we’re glad to have them.”

With Deng as the driving force, the team has swiftly made history. It played its first competitive fixture in 2017 and qualified for the World Cup at the first time of asking, finishing 17th out of 32 teams at the tournament in 2023.

As the best-placed African team, South Sudan qualified for Olympics as the continent’s sole representative and continued to show that it’s far from a pushover by taking the historically dominant Team USA to the final buzzer in a warm-up game in London earlier this month.

‘We play to win’

No one can ever question Deng’s commitment to the project – according to South Sudan head coach Royal Ivey, Deng has been funding the team out of his own pocket for four years.

It all appears to have been worth it, however, with Deng stating his pride at being part of “nation building” and that there is “no better feeling” than wearing a shirt that bears the name of South Sudan, though he wishes that he had gotten the opportunity to actually play for the team.

“For now, the polo is good,” he laughed.

After winning its first game and writing its name into the history books, speculation about how far this team can go has already ramped up, though Deng believes that the group’s main goal has already been achieved.

“We’ve been able to tell a story that’s really unique,” the 39-year-old explained. “We’ve worked very hard to get here. I think that we know that we are playing to show people how good we can be. I think the story itself is out there. People understand it, people know it. They can take it however they want to take it.”

This is not a team that’s here to make up the numbers, though.

“We play to win, we’re not just happy to be here,” said Deng. “We feel like we do belong here, and we’re representing the continent, and we want to represent it the right way. When people watch us play, they understand that, you know, we’re well coached and we have great players.”

Next up for South Sudan in Paris is the tallest of tasks – a rematch against a Team USA that features the likes of LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry. For the staff and players though, the message has always been the most important thing.

“I think we’ll go out there and make a lot of people proud of how we play.”

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