Three young centres with links to Africa are making their debut in the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the 2024-25 season with experts hailing the growing contribution African athletes are making to North America’s top professional basketball league.
Cameroon’s Ulrich Chomche was the youngest player to be picked in this year’s NBA Draft at age 18, playing his first game for the Toronto Raptors on 23 October.
Born in Belgium, but raised in Cameroon, 20-year-old Yves Missi is playing for the New Orleans Pelicans this season while 21-year-old Adam Bona, who was born in Nigeria, is on the roster for the Philadelphia 76ers.
An estimated 10 per cent of current NBA players were born in an African country or have one parent from the continent. This includes 2023 Most Valuable Player (MVP) Joel Embiid who was born in Yaounde, Cameroon and helped USA to a gold medal in the men’s tournament of the Olympic Games Paris 2024. Giannis Antetokounmpo, a Greek international with Nigerian roots, earned the coveted MVP award in 2019 and 2020 and is regarded as one of the greatest players of all time.
In addition to past successes of athletes with African roots, there are high expectations for the future representatives of that group in the NBA. In particular, for the No.1 pick in the 2023 NBA Draft Victor Wembanyama, whose father has Congolese roots. Called one of the most exciting players of his generation, Wembanyama already has an Olympic silver medal with France to back up those claims.
More talented players from Africa are expected to make their way to the NBA in the coming years thanks to the growth of the Basketball Africa League (BAL). The BAL completed its fourth season in June 2024 with Angola’s Petro de Luanda emerging as the champions.
“With BAL, we are exactly where we hoped to be when we started four years ago,” Clare Akamanzi, chief executive of NBA Africa, told BBC Sport Africa. “The measure of success for us is one, being known as a league. The second is getting more countries to participate.
“We have more than 25 countries that participate in the road to BAL. What we’ve seen is that countries have been inspired to start teams.”
