FIGS Trustee Justin Gordon-Muortat was at one of the South Sudan men's basketball games and reports here.
South Sudan’s national basketball team, dubbed the Bright Stars, has uplifted and inspired the strife-stricken nation with their world-class performances at the 2024 Paris Olympics and in the pre-games friendly matches with Great Britain and the USA in mid-July in London.
Their performance galvanised the spirits and rekindled the unity and resolve of the South Sudanese people. The team has been dubbed the Giants of the Nile – a deserved name for their sheer resilience, determination and fearlessness.
South Sudanese came to Lille, France (where the matches were held) wrapped in their flags or national team sports outfits and from their various locations and walks of life. Their sizeable numbers came from all parts of the world in a stirring coming together of the diaspora and those living in South Sudan.
The Bright Stars had finished as the top team from Africa at the 2023 FIBA World Cup, and automatically qualified for this year's Olympics. The success of the team has been mainly due to the brilliant and patriotic former coach, now head of the South Sudan Basketball Federation, Luol Deng. He brought structure and funding from his resources to establish a world-class team within the space of only a decade. Luol Deng himself was a former two-time NBA All-Star player and played for the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers among others. He also played and represented the Great Britain men's team earning him recognition with an OBE in 2021.
The nascent nation of South Sudan joined the International Olympic Committee and the Olympics movement on the 2nd of August 2015. The National Olympic Committee representing South Sudan consists of 7 federations and managed to qualify and pitch teams to participate in basketball, athletics and taekwondo at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Basketball, athletics and taekwondo are all important sports in South Sudan, but still in their formation and infancy stage in terms of world competition. However, the South Sudan basketball team, famously known as the Bright Stars, have done the most to capture the hearts and attention of the South Sudanese people at home and among its colossal diasporic communities.
Luol Deng, who organised and funded the men’s basketball team, is famous throughout South Sudan as a former basketball player, having played in the USA and UK. He is revered in South Sudan along with legend Manut Bol (one of the tallest players in NBA history).
Deng and his former NBA colleague and head coach, Royal Ivey, who is NBA assistant coach with the Houston Rockets, have done wonders and garnered a formidable and inspiring team in the Bright Stars, now playing internationally.
The Bright Stars friendly match in July in London engaged many in the UK. They defeated Great Britain 84-81 and lost against the USA (who are the global champions) in a thrilling game 101-100.
At their debut match with Puerto Rico at the Olympics on Sunday, July 28, the team made history by defeating their opponents 90-79.
This was an epic and momentous occasion for South Sudan and its people. The victory was a heart-warming and memorable occasion, dwarfing the emotions of the wider Paris Olympics for the South Sudanese. It was a euphoric and historic time, reminiscent in feeling to South Sudan’s independence from Sudan on the 11th of July 2011.
The Bright Stars were eventually knocked out of the tournament by Serbia on Saturday 3rd August, but their achievement and representation of the nascent state on the global stage of the Olympics, brought pride, unity and a sense of hope for a brighter time for South Sudan.
South Sudanese converged on Lille to watch the game from all over the world, whether from Minnesota, California, Melbourne, Sydney, Hamburg, Munich, Amsterdam, Paris, Oslo, Nairobi, Kampala, Belfast, or from Juba and across South Sudan itself, both men and women, presidential advisors, ministers, youth leaders, academics, business fraternity and fans of every background.
North Sudanese also came from various diaspora locations to support the South Sudan Bright Stars. They set aside their own flags and nationality for the matches and became, as it were, South Sudanese themselves.
The electrifying atmosphere at the Olympics and the support the Bright Stars and South Sudan received was incredibly heart-warming. The Bright Stars have won many friends and supporters, who all chanted SSD (the South Sudan letter code), including Puerto Rican, French and even Serbian fans, all celebrating the new kids on the block.
Globally, and particularly in Juba, thousands were glued to public screenings, TV broadcasts and social media outlets. The occasion was a continual celebration, evoking great pride in the people and their country.
