Basketball in Africa

It's another season over for the youngsters being groomed to take the national and international basketball scenes under the atmosphere of the Nigerian Big
Man Camp 2006. The now annual training programme for teenagers ended on Saturday in Lagos, Nigeria.

The first phase of the Nigerian Big Man Camp 2006 by the weekend but with some of the kids who took part in the 2005 Nigeria Top-50 camp moving over
to Dakar, Senegal for another leg of camp under the sponsorship of sports wear manufacturing giant NIKE.

The players are Harry Ezennbe (AHIP), Solomon Alao, Ibrahim Adamu, (Kano Pillars), Ismaila Dauda (Kano State), Ayodele Ahmed, Mbaram Omori (Dodan
Warriors), Temidayo Adebayo (Warriors Academy), Frank Benjamin-Eze (Comets), Ehime Orukpe (Ebun Comets) and Mbah Ifeanyi (Lagos Islanders).

These players show cased their talents last year and were promptly snapped up by teams in the national league. They are attending another international camp
that will further fine-tune their skills just as some of their counterparts from Senegal visited Nigeria for the last October camp in Lagos, Nigeria big-man camp coordinator Masai Ujiri enthused.

The Big Man Camp is organised for teenage players with minimum height of about 6-8" and above. The camp comes under the arrangement of Radar Hoops – a basketball management outfit run by two former Nigerian internationals Masai Ujiri and Godwin Owinge. The first camp held three years ago at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in northern part of the country before it changed venue to Lagos last year obviously for easier human resources management of the programme and the awesome media presence in Lagos.

For all three camps run, it has meant working with a pool of international, local coaches and former national team players. Some of the US based coaches who worked last year with the kids includes Jarrin Akana (Denver Nuggets), Joe Touomouu (BWB) and Tommy Land Ryan Marks.

But wherever the venue may be, trainers involved or players working out, Masai says the focus remains the same.

"From the on set the idea was to get our young players to get the right training at the right stage of their careers. We are building them up in such a way that they will understand exactly what is on offer outside especially at the NBA and foreign leagues that they are aspiring to get involved. There are some cheats who claim to be managers and they have to prepared to deal with such
situation.

"When they are mentally set before venturing out, then we can expect the best for them whether they eventually play basketball or not," Masai said.

Nestle Milo and Union Bank through their Sports Club backed this year's programme.