The National Basketball Association (NBA) has committed to building 1,000 basketball courts in Africa over the next 10 years, 100 of them in Kenya.
Speaking in Nairobi on Tuesday, NBA’s Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer, Mark Tatum, said the NBA, through NBA Africa, was keen to create spaces where boys and girls can access more opportunities to play basketball.
“We hope to provide youth here in Kenya and around the continent with more opportunities to play basketball. We will build 1,000 basketball courts in Africa over the next 10 years, 100 of them in Kenya. They will be places where boys and girls can learn life lessons, and to become better basketball players, discipline, teamwork, and good work ethic,” Tatum said in Nairobi on Tuesday.
“We opened our fifth office in the continent in Nairobi last November, and we have been busy growing the NBA, the Basketball Africa League, and the game of basketball here in Kenya and throughout the continent. I have just come from Abu Dhabi where we took off our season, had winners of the last two NBA championships – Boston Celtics and the Denver Nuggets competing in front of fans from some 40 plus countries, showing the appeal of the game of basketball. I was at the Olympics in Paris where I had the chance to see first-hand the team from South Sudan competing at a very high level at the Olympics, and it became clear to the rest of the world that African basketball is in the rise,” he said.
He applauded the work done by former Los Angeles power forward Luol Deng and coach Royal Ivey have done to lift basketball in South Sudan.
Tatum noted that currently, 10 percent of the NBA players (around 50) have roots in Africa.
In Kenya, NBA Africa will work with the Kenya Basketball Federation, and world basketball body FIBA.
The NBA created NBA Africa five years ago in collaboration with different partners to drive its programmes in Africa, chiefly the Basketball Africa League (BAL), the NBA Academy Africa, and infrastructural programmes.
