The New Wave of Africans: Great risks can lead to great rewards for basketball players

Growing up in Nigeria, Robert Ojeah fretted over the demands of everyday life, the sort of things that shouldn't be a burden to a child.

Would he have a roof over his head that night? What was he going to do for money? Where was his next meal coming from?

"We would catch animals. Cook them, roast them, eat them," he said. "Rabbits. Snakes. Squirrels."

No matter what life dealt him, Ojeah kept growing. And growing. All the way up to 6-10, with muscles upon muscles on a hard-as-a-rock, 220-pound body that's still only 16 years old.

Meet basketball's new wave.

At the top is Tanzania's Hasheem Thabeet, a 7-2 center who played at UConn and is expected to be one of the top picks in Thursday's NBA Draft.

He and Ojeah are part of a vanguard of African youngsters who have found their way, through basketball, from a continent mired in poverty to America -- landing on the rosters of high school, AAU and college teams across the land.

The sacrifices are immense. These players are little more than children when they leave behind family and friends, landing in a new country, a new culture. But as difficult as the journey is, the rewards can be even greater. They inspire many young Africans to try.

"When you go back to Africa with a degree from an American school, you are somebody," said Dikembe Mutombo, one of the earliest of the African exports, whose long NBA career finally ended last month at age 42 when he injured his knee in a playoff game with the Houston Rockets.

At the highest level, the numbers are still minuscule: seven native Africans (including Chicago's Luol Deng, who left Sudan to escape a civil war and considers himself British) were in the NBA this season, making up less than 2 percent of the league's total players.

Look further, though. There were more than 170 African players at U.S. junior colleges, colleges and universities last season. Other sources show 100 players or so at the high-school level, many at prep schools catering to international students.

Not all will make it to the NBA, of course, but the growing numbers will surely have a trickle-up effect.

"If I can do it, they can do it, too," said DJ Mbenga, a native of the Congo who won an NBA championship ring last week as an end-of-the-bench backup center for the Los Angeles Lakers. "When the opportunity opens up, you have to take it."

Back down the pipeline are players such as Solomon Alabi, a 7-1 Nigerian heading into his sophomore season at Florida State. Like most African youngsters, he started out playing soccer.

"We didn't really have basketball," he said. "We only have one basketball court in the place I'm from and it's not really an organized basketball court. It was on the sand and we played soccer on the basketball court. It wasn't like level concrete or anything."

Alabi went to a camp run by Masai Ujiri, a Nigerian who played at Montana State and professionally in Europe before taking over as director of global scouting for the Toronto Raptors. Alabi wound up with a scholarship to Montverde Academy, a private boarding school in central Florida, and lived with a host family on the weekends.

"It was difficult," said Alabi, who didn't even have a pair of basketball sneakers when he got to Florida. "The food and everything, communicating with people, it was hard. I was quiet all the time unless I was playing basketball and having fun."

Ojeah started out playing soccer -- he was a goalie -- but switched to basketball when he was 13. His size got him invited to a camp attended by Linzy Davis, who runs Team Georgia Elite, a high-level AAU program in Atlanta. Davis has turned the recruitment of African players into something of a specialty -- developing crucial relationships, learning the ins and outs of local customs, becoming an expert on visa approval, which might be the most important step in the process.

Davis lines up financial aid at schools such as Mount Zion Christian Academy in Durham, where Ojeah goes to school.

While tuition and weekday board is usually provided by a prep school eager to boost its basketball stature or by a wealthy benefactor, Davis still has to dig deep out of his own pocket. He's driving players around the Southeast every weekend, or buying airline tickets for long trips.

"I'm well into five figures on these kids," said Davis, who sells medical supplies and lab equipment and insists he gains no financial benefit from his work with the players. "I get nothing out of this other than the enjoyment of seeing them get to where they want to get to."