South Sudan’s Basketball Team Made History Getting to the Olympics, but They’re Far From Satisfied

If it were based on Saturday’s matchup, it won’t seem out of place to say South Sudan has a healthy fighting chance on July 31, but it has announced itself as no small fry, which means its far more talented opponent will come out with a different level of intensity, keen to avoid any near or outright upset. From an optimistic standpoint, however, the Bright Stars heading to Paris — as the only African team competing in basketball no less — is already a stunning achievement.

The 12-man roster assembled for the South Sudan basketball team is already more than the total number of athletes that have represented the young East African country at the Olympics — three in Rio 2016 and two in Tokyo 2020. Also part of the young country’s contingent are middle distance runner Abraham Guem in the Men’s 800m and Women’s 100m sprinter Atalena Napule Loliha.

While it has fielded athletes in track and field, this will be the country’s basketball debut at the Olympics. It’s a culmination of an uprising that started with South Sudan’s debut at the 2021 FIBA Afrobasket, where it made it all the way to the quarter finals, enabling the country to compete for and eventually snag a place in the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup in Manila, Philippines.

In Manila, the Bright Stars won three out of five games, including an emphatic 101-78 win against continental basketball powerhouse Angola, which helped South Sudan place as the highest ranked African team in the World Cup and automatically qualify for the Olympics.

“We’re a bunch of guys who just care about the win because of what it brings to the nation,” Luol Deng, former player, two-time NBA all-star, and president of South Sudan’s Basketball Federation, said in an interview with the Olympics.com Podcast. “It’s not about basketball, it’s about South Sudan.”

Deng’s sentiments have been consistently echoed by the players themselves, who see this run as a symbolic representation of South Sudanese tenacity and pride, as well as laying footsteps for younger people to follow. “This is bigger than basketball for us,” Wenyen Gabriel, who’s played with several teams in the NBA, said after Saturday’s exhibition game. “To show people that we can compete and understand that hoops in Africa are something for the future. It’s only a matter of time before the next generation gets built up.”

Only gaining independence in 2011, South Sudan’s basketballing feats are made even more impressive by its related conditions. After going through two brutal, lengthy civil wars, and a bloody fight for independence from Sudan, there’s a galvanizing effect of creating a new narrative amongst the basketball players, all of whom were born while their country was war torn.

In assembling the current roster for the Olympics, Deng, who was born in South Sudan but fled the country as a child, scoured for players of South Sudanese descent from across the world, more than a handful having fled at a young age, similar to Deng, or born to parents who had fled before their birth. Regardless, there’s a common sense of pride and commitment to uplifting the country they play for.

“For me personally, playing for South Sudan is a huge kind of honor,” Marial Shayok said before the World Cup. Shayok, who was born in Canada to South Sudanese parents, was drafted in the second round by the Philadelphia 76ers back in 2019, and has played in the G-League, Turkey and China. On Saturday, he led all scorers with 24 points, while making six three-pointers. “Being able to represent my country is not something I take for granted… Primarily, our desire is to continue making the people of South Sudan proud,” he said.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by South Sudan Basketball (@ssbfed)

For Nuni Omot, he’s proud to be part of “one of the best sports stories.” Omot, the first African to win MVP honors at the Basketball Africa League, was born in a refugee camp in Kenya due to a civil war in Ethiopia, before moving to Minnesota at age two. He specially cherishes the achievements of the Bright Stars for how hardwon they’ve been so far.

“People don’t understand where we were a couple of years ago,” Omot said after South Sudan’s historic Olympic qualification. “We came from playing zone five, playing outside on outdoor courts. We don’t have a single indoor basketball court in South Sudan, everything is outdoors. One rim is higher than the others, there’s no official ten-foot regulation hoop. To be in this position is a blessing.”

In its Olympics debut, the Bright Stars will be looking to qualify from a tough group where it will face Puerto Rico in its opener and last year’s World Cup runners-up Serbia in its final group game, with the U.S. rematch in the middle.

South Sudan is no doubt the least favorite to make it out of the group into the knockout, but as it showed at last year’s World Cup and Saturday’s exhibition, the team has an abundance of size, which helped gum up the U.S. offense for stretches, and some clearly good shot making (the team regularly scores 100-plus points). In addition, these strong attributes are laid on a foundation of grit.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by South Sudan Basketball (@ssbfed)

“It’s bigger than just us and bigger than basketball — we have a country we’re fighting for… to put our country on the map, it’s huge,” point guard Carlik Jonessaid during last year’s World Cup. Jones, whose mother is of South Sudanese descent, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and has been the driving force for the team’s strong performances since joining last year.

The 2022/23 G-League MVP became the first player in 30 years to hit a double-double stat line at the World Cup, a feat he repeated on two more occasions during the tournament. On Saturday, he hit a triple double line of 15 points, 11 assists and 11 rebounds, playing a wonderful floor game even though his shooting wasn’t as efficient as it usually is. For Jones, putting up numbers is in service to his team’s greater goals.

“South Sudan is slept on, its people are slept on, and we as a unit are slept on,” he said in the Olympics interview. “We are just trying to put South Sudan on the map and let people know who we are.”