Categories: Entertainment

Masai Ujiri’s Camp Strengthens Basketball in Africa

Giants Of Africa Top 50, a two-day basketball camp championed by General Manager of the NBA’s Toronto Raptors Masai Ujiri’s (pictured) ended successfully this week in Nairobi.

The camp, which was held in Kenya for the first time, gathered the top-50 basketball players from Kenya and three players from Sudan in a clinic that sought to upgrade the skills of the invited 15- to- 18-year-olds.

The annual gathering was held at Brookhouse Sports Centre under the watchful eye of Ujiri, the first African-born general manager for any American sports team.

Ujiri opened the camp in order to give the teens life skills to succeed in basketball. This was followed by drills and instruction to work on the fundamentals of the game, which was coordinated by Jama Mahlalela (assistant coach, Toronto Raptors), Patrick Mutombo (assistant coach, Denver Nuggets), Abel Nson (scout, Toronto Raptors), Michael Akuboh (scout, Toronto Raptors), and Godwin Owinje (founder, Radar Hoops).

See photos from the Giants of Africa 2014 basketball camp here:

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Masai Ujiri's Giants of Africa Basketball Camp 2014

Day 2 continued with more intensive drills, skills development stations, and evaluation scrimmages. This was followed by five-team tournaments, where campers got the opportunity to utilize skills learned for coaching clinics.

Amadou Gallo Fall, NBA vice president for Development – Africa, made a special guest appearance to encourage the campers and speak of the importance of basketball in Africa.

Ujiri, who was named by Business Insider as one of the top 50 behind-the-scene persons in sports in August, indicated that he will be back next year to continue to affect the youth in Kenya.

Meanwhile, Ujiri recently received an award at Face2Face Africa‘s Pan-African Week among others things for his contribution to sports on the continent. By giving back to Africa through basketball, there is hope that the continent will eventually produce competitive teams in the sport.

Josh Odoi

Joshua Odoi is the founder of Hoorie Media Group, a media content creation company based in Cleveland, Ohio. He is an engineer by trade and has interest in foreign policy and sports. He has appeared on several sports shows in Ghana and has in the past co-hosted programs at Radio Gold in Accra, Ghana. He wrote for the Kentucky Kernel on politics and foreign affairs, and on Sundays, you can find him playing the bass guitar at a cathedral somewhere in Cleveland. Twitter: @FreshJosh Instagram: @FreshJosh