Perhaps the biggest reason why the Olympic Games are as popular as they are is the knowledge that we will inevitably see new heroes, from the most unlikely of backgrounds, from all corners of the world, will find their way to victories and, at least for a fleeting moment, popularity on a global level.
But I’d offer that no matter who might emerge as an individual star over the next two weeks plus, you’d be hard pressed to find a more unlikely and least known group that has already pulled off a win that the South Sudan men’s basketball team.
Consider this: Before yesterday, the team has as many outdoor basketball courts in their entire country as they did Olympic appearances. Zero.
When they did take the court–an indoor one– in Lille for their first-ever Olympic game, they were serenaded with the wrong national anthem. Which can almost be forgiven, because the country itself has only existed since 2011.
But they eventually did figure out the correct entry on the playlist and, from there, as the ASSOCIATED PRESS’ Kyle Hightower reported yesterday, the real surprises began:
Carlik Jones scored 19 points and South Sudan rallied in the second half to beat Puerto Rico 90-79 in the Paris Olympics opener for both teams on Sunday.
“We’re not a secret anymore,” South Sudan coach Royal Ivey said afterward.
It was the latest milestone for South Sudan, which is playing in its first Olympics after qualifying as Africa’s top finisher in last year’s World Cup.
To some harder-core Olympic hoops afficiandos in these parts, they already weren’t a secret, as Hightower reminded.
South Sudan nearly pulled off a stunning exhibition upset of the U.S. leading into the start of the Olympics. It showed that same scrappiness Sunday against a Puerto Rico team it lost to in last year’s World Cup.
And as THE SPORTING NEWS’ Kyle Irving reminded in his preview article of that exhibition, there were more than a few recognizable names to really hard-core basketball fans:
South Sudan’s roster is littered with current, former, and future NBA players, headlined by 17-year-old Duke commit and projected 2025 NBA Draft lottery pick Khaman Maluach. He is joined by familiar names like Carlik Jones, Marial Shayok, Wenyen Gabriel, Peter Jok, and JT Thor.
And Chicago Bulls fans might recognize the guy who is steering this speeding S.S., as Hightower reported last month:
Luol Deng was watching his vision coming into focus right in front of him.
It was September 2023, barely six years since South Sudan had played in its first international basketball tournament.
Yet there was Deng, a Sudanese native turned refugee and NBA star, hopping behind a circle of euphoric players inside the South Sudan locker room minutes after it defeated Angola during the FIBA World Cup to finish as Africa’s highest rank team and earn its first Olympic basketball berth.
“Where we going?” Deng chanted repeatedly in a moment captured on social media.
“Paris!” the team shouted back.
Well, they’re there. They’re 1-0, with a +11 margin of victory. And guess who Deng and company will square off against in their next of the three qualifying round games they win play against? None other than the same USA team they narrowly lost to just days again.
Arguably, Team USA may not have been playing that exhibition game full force, and was indeed missing Kevin Durant, who returned in stellar fashion and led the Americans to a 24-point win over Nikola Jokic and Serbia in yesterday’s other Group C game. So perhaps hoping for an upset on the level of, say, what the U.S. men’s hockey team was able to pull off in Lake Placid might be too tall an order for even the talented and already overachieving South Sudanese. But even a reasonably close game could assure that they will play a quarterfinal round game, and at this rate who knows if a medal might not be a possibility?
I’ll say this much. It’s gotten me to care enough about a matchup which on paper seemed like one I could watch in fast-forward or highlight form to watch live. And it’s making the good folks at the NBC family of networks and platforms that have seen these games already get off to as surprisingly positive a start as, say, South Sudan pretty happy as well.
Which means in many ways, this team has already won. Which is more than can be said for Bulls of Deng’s time.
Courage..