Shay Hun's Blog

Team Nigeria

The Nigerian contingency participating in the ongoing Tokyo Olympics is made up of Nigerians who were born and raised abroad. About 90% of Team Nigeria.

That means most of them are sponsoring themselves and they risk sustaining a career-threatening injury that leaves them at the mercy of GoFundMe campaigns.

This includes the Basketball team, who stole the headlines recently when they beat the Team USA led by Kevin Durant in an exhibition game. They even defeated Argentina, which is equally a highly ranked Basketball nation. Team Nigeria Basketball Team up until last week, had no sponsor, no support whatsoever from the Government and the Coach who is also an associate coach of an NBA team wasn't getting paid. Well, after beating the USA, they've gotten the attention of the world and all that seems to have changed a bit. The same can't be said of contestants in other sports.

Each time I see a Nigerian trying to make Nigeria proud in spite and despite, the little patriotism left in me swells up.
Keni
I hear you Seun... despite the odds and fighting many types of discrimination, when they make it to the public arena and match + beat the competition - it is remarkable. I am sure I have shared this video with you before - of how people in Jamaica rejoice when Usain Bolt bolts in the competitions....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdGQ43smLoc  
2021-07-24 01:38:12
Abraham Kim
Wow an international team could beat 
Kevin Durant
and his crew? Unbelievable.. but then again it was exhibition. I doubt Chef KD will be losing in the actual tournament. 

BTW that's crazy that so much of the Nigerian athletes are born and raised abroad. Is that because the country doesn't foster/support enough of its own athletes? So it's more like they happen to be someplace that has more infrastructure for sports so that they can get really good... but then they wanna support their homeland?

My friend from 
India
says that he wished that his country supported athletics more. He said his family is super athletic but putting any time into sports was not seen as smart because there was little support and no path to any professional career either in it or around it supporting the pros.
2021-07-24 16:40:58
Seun Oyebode
Wow Keni, that's an awesome video. It's my first time seeing it. It reminds me of when the Nigerian football team won Gold at the Atlanta 96 Olympics. All of Nigeria, infact all of Africa kept vigils to watch the game and were rooting for the boys. It's remarkable.

abrahamKim
Its simple, better infrastructure, enables them to pursue their athletic dreams. It's tougher doing that over here. BTW I don't care if it's an exhibition game or not, we won Team USA and even Stephen A Smith was salty about it. When Nigerians pounced on him on Twitter, He had to apologise. Wins like that don't come around often, so allow us to savour it.
2021-07-24 19:36:33
Abraham Kim
haha sorry i didn't mean for it being an exhibition to mean that you can't celebrate it. you can celebrate whatever you want. 
2021-07-24 20:37:37
Seun Oyebode
Abe I’m sure the way I worded my response communicated I was angry. Nahh. 

I’m sorry. 

Any opportunity to brag over America must not be missed 😁
2021-07-25 01:43:39
Abraham Kim
Seun you should know by now. NEVER BET AGAINST AMERICA lol jk
2021-07-25 02:50:28

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