Fans who will be glued to their television sets from Cape Town to Cairo, from Dakar to Mogadishu, and those who will be fortunate enough to get into the Sun Arena on the 4th of August, will welcome another opportunity to pay homage to one of the gentlemen of the game.
Luol Ajou Deng, the South Sudanese legend, will make a record-tying third appearance at the NBA Africa Game, and he may well set the record as the player to captain most teams at the showpiece event.
The 220-pound forward played only 13 minutes for the Los Angeles Lakers in the last NBA season, and has been on the hardwood a total 1499 minutes in 57 games in the last two seasons, but that is still 25 hours more than he needed to play, to qualify for a slot on the biggest NBA game on African soil.
The man who was labelled ‘Deng-erous’ despite his smiling mien, once led the NBA in games played in his third season, as he suited up for Chicago Bulls 82 times. That was in the 2006/07 season.
In the 2011/12 season, he led the NBA in minutes played when he averaged 39.4 minutes per game for the Bulls. The following season, his 38.7 minutes per game average was again the most played by anyone in the league.
In those back-to-back, most-minutes-per-game seasons, he became the only player with African roots apart from the legendary duo of Hakeem Olajuwon and Dikembe Mutombo, to make back-to-back appearances in the All-Star team; and he remains one of only three players born and raised on the continent to have that honour.
Deng has been an exceptional professional, a true ambassador of both the continent and the game in every one of his 13 years in the NBA. His presence at both the Basketball Without Borders camp, where fresh-faced youngsters get the chance to tap from his well of wisdom; and the NBA Africa Game, where both the established and emerging players in the NBA learn some court-craft by playing alongside him, will always be one of the highlights of the event.
That was why he has either captained or co-captained Team Africa in the last two NBA Africa Games, and why he is again likely to be the leader of the players when they arrive Pretoria, South Africa for the third edition.
Deng’s all-time scoring average remains a respectable 15.0 points per game; with his highest average coming in those heady days at Chicago, where he played 10 seasons; he averaged 16.1 points per game in the Windy City. The two seasons he played at Miami also yielded a haul of points, as he ended with a 13.1 point per game average. It is at the Lakers, where his role has changed from that of an on-the-floor general to that of an inspiration for the younger generation coming through, that is why both his minutes and scoring have diminished over the last two seasons; but what the Lakers may have lost on the floor, Africa will gain, as the man from Sudan once again takes his place as a ranking member of Team Africa.
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