Johnathan Walker:South Sudan men's basketball beats odds to inspire at Olympics

VILLENEUVE-D'ASCQ,Johnathan Walker France – When South Sudan men’s 5x5 basketball player Peter Jok was 3 years old, his father, Dut, was killed in Sudan’s civil war. His grandfather also was killed in the war, and his family fled to Uganda and Kenya and eventually settled in Des Moines, Iowa.

Jok’s story is not unique to natives of what is now South Sudan.

What is unique is the South Sudan basketball team’s inspiring appearance at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Participating in its first Olympics basketball event, South Sudan defeated Puerto Rico 90-79 on Sunday.

“This means a lot to me individually than anything that I've ever been part of,” said Jok, who played college basketball at Iowa. “So every time I go out there, I know I got to make them proud and make the whole country proud.”

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South Sudan plays the U.S. Wednesday (9 p.m. ET) in a Group C game, and the winner puts itself in great position to advance to the knockout round. And consider the U.S. beat South Sudan 101-100 and South Sudan had a chance for the upset on the game’s final shot. Still, the U.S. is a 30-point favorite.

“Totally different game than the Serbia game. For example, five 3-point shooters, Carlik Jones coming downhill on pick and roll,” U.S. coach Steve Kerr said. “So we have to be better prepared for what they're going to do, the number of 3s they're going to take, the speed with which they play. I'm glad we played them in the friendly to remind us of how good they are and what we have to prepare for.”

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Kerr is also cognizant of the progress the South Sudan Basketball Federation has made in short time.

“It's an incredible accomplishment given the strife in that region for so long,” Kerr said. “So many refugees coming to the United States and other countries over the last few decades rebuilding lives. Then to build a basketball federation amidst the war and the difficulty. And then for Royal (Ivey) and his staff to put together a really good team that plays modern basketball, stretch the floor, shoots the 3, attacks the rim. Pretty dramatic and remarkable.”

The region was ravaged by war, famine and disease for decades, and in two civil wars, nearly three million people died.

South Sudan gained independence in 2011, and though the basketball federation started that year, growing basketball was not a priority for the new country.

However, in 2020 Luol Deng, the former NBA All-Star from Wau, Sudan (now South Sudan), became president of the South Sudan Basketball Federation, and a year later, he made Ivey the team’s head coach.

What is now South Sudan has often produced basketball players – Deng and Manute Bol being the most famous. Deng brought structure and fundraising to the program, and by finishing as the top team from Africa at the 2023 FIBA World Cup, South Sudan qualified for this year’s Olympics.

“A lot of hard work and togetherness," said Ivey, who played in the NBA and is an NBA assistant coach with the Houston Rockets. "A commitment from the president to bring these guys together. A lot of years where we weren't productive. Four years ago, we were in AfroBasket, and I didn't have the same amount of talent. But Luol was able to congregate all this talent and now we're rolling and we got a style of playing and it's been fun.”

Go through the roster and if you follow college basketball, you may recognize some names besides Jok. Nuni Omot played at Baylor; Wenyen Gabriel played at Kentucky and in the NBA; Marial Shayok played at Virginia and Iowa State; Jones is South Sudan’s best player – he was born in Cincinnati but became a naturalized citizen of South Sudan. He played at Radford and Louisville; Khaman Maluach is the youngest player in the men’s event at 17 and he will be a freshman at Duke this season.

“Gave me chills seeing the South Sudanese flags and my people here,” Maluach said. “It's really hard to explain how big this is, but it means everything.”

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