Men In Sports: Jahlil Obika Okafor

One of the best players in the present Nigerian national male basketball team, D’Tigers, is Detroit Pistons’ NBA star, Jahlil Okafor. The basketball centre was born on December 15, 1995, in Fort Smith, Arkansas, USA, to a Nigerian father, Chukwudi Okafor, and an African-American mother, Dacresha Lanett Benton. Okafor featured in his freshman college basketball season (2014-2015) for the Duke national championship team.

His professional career journey started on June 25, 2015, after he was selected as the 3^rd overall pick in the 2015 NBA draft by the Philadelphia 76ers. An impressive 20-point NBA Summer League debut saw Okafor earn a two-year contract with the 76ers on July 7, and capped that off with a 26-point, 7-rebound, 2-block effort (including 8 turnovers) debut for 76ers on October 28, 2015, against Boston Celtics.

Okafor would ply his trade elsewhere after joining the Brooklyn Nets on December 7, 2017, before moving to New Orleans the following year (August 9, 2018). At the Pelicans, Okafor posted a season-high of 17 points against the Milwaukee Bucks on December 19, 2018. The Nigerian would back that up with 6 blocks career-high against the Detroit Pistons on January 23, 2019, before scoring an outstanding 30 points in the Pelicans’ last game of the season against the Golden State Warriors.

After the death of basketball legend, Kobe Bryant, the sympathetic side of Okafor would come to the fore on January 28, 2020, after announcing that in honour of Kobe, he would change his number from 8. A move that saw him wear the number 9 for the remainder of the season.

Okafor signed for his current club, the Detroit Pistons on December 1, 2020.

At the international level, Okafor represented the United States in the FIBA Americas U-16 Championship in 2011 and won gold. At the 2012 FIBA Under-17 World Cup, he was named the MVP of the tournament won by the Americans. He would be instrumental in the 2013 FIBA Under-19 World Cup for the gold-winning USA team, as he was selected in the All-Tournament team. Jahlil Okafor decided to switch allegiance to Nigeria and made it public on February 23, 2020. He is currently in camp with the D’Tigers ahead of the Olympics this summer and has been impressive in Nigeria’s international friendly wins against the United States and Argentina.

Sources

Wikipedia

ESPN

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ugo-chinedu

I am a Lion, I love to hit heights that seem impossible so I can motivate others and prove doubters wrong. For me, impossible is nothing. I'm open to learning and I love to read, travel and meet new faces.

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