Accessibility links

Breaking News

Basketball Africa League Opens Second Season


The Kigali-based club team Rwanda Energy Group (REG), shown at practice, will make its debut in the BAL’s 2022 season. (VOA)
The Kigali-based club team Rwanda Energy Group (REG), shown at practice, will make its debut in the BAL’s 2022 season. (VOA)
Basketball Africa League Opens Second Season
please wait

No media source currently available

0:00 0:05:40 0:00

The second season of the Basketball Africa League (BAL) started last weekend in Dakar, Senegal.

Twelve teams will compete this season for the BAL title. Last year, Egypt’s Zamalek won the championship.

The league was supposed to start in 2020, but was delayed a year by the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, the season took place over two weeks in Kigali, Rwanda. This year, the schedule runs over three months and 38 games. They will be played in Dakar, Kigali and Cairo, Egypt.

The BAL is supported by America’s National Basketball Association (NBA) and FIBA, basketball’s international governing body. It is the first time the NBA has put money into a league outside of North America.

Victor Williams is NBA Africa’s president. At an event in Lagos, Nigeria, in February, he said the league is evidence of the NBA’s interest in “growing the game across the continent.”

Sam Ahmedu is the president of FIBA Africa Zone 3, which includes Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation.

He said the expanded number of games will permit more people to see games in person.

“It will help to popularize the game and attract more sponsorship,” he said.

A sponsor is a well-known company that supports a sports organization with money.

Australian basketball coach Liz Mills, hired in February by Morocco’s AS Sale Club, is the BAL’s first female head coach. (VOA)
Australian basketball coach Liz Mills, hired in February by Morocco’s AS Sale Club, is the BAL’s first female head coach. (VOA)

Beyond sponsorships from Nike and Pepsi, the league also has the support of former United States president Barack Obama who is working to help promote NBA Africa. The league announced in 2021 that Obama received part ownership of NBA Africa in return for his work. Obama said any money he receives will go to his foundation’s programs in Africa.

Dikembe Mutombo is a former NBA player from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He invested money to help start the league.

Basketball’s African future

Soccer is the most popular sport in Africa, but with a number of NBA players who are either from Africa or have an African parent, the sport of basketball is growing fast.

There are about 50 NBA players with African roots. The most famous are Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks, Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers and Pascal Siakam of the Toronto Raptors. The league is hoping to help little-known players improve their game and get attention. Last season, 15 scouts watched the league.

Philadelphia 76ers' Joel Embiid (21) dunks the ball against Chicago Bulls' Tristan Thompson (3) during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Monday, March 7, 2022, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
Philadelphia 76ers' Joel Embiid (21) dunks the ball against Chicago Bulls' Tristan Thompson (3) during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Monday, March 7, 2022, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

This year, each BAL team will have a young player from the NBA Academy Africa, a training center in Saly, Senegal, for teenage players.

The program will provide another pathway for good African players “to reach their potential as players and people,” said Amadou Gallo Fall. He is the BAL president.

One team leader, however, believes athletes should not only play to try to make the NBA, but to make the BAL a great league.

“I believe the BAL will grow as big as the NBA and bigger,” said Relton Booysen, coach of the Cape Town Tigers, a new team in the BAL.

Regardless of whether the BAL becomes successful throughout Africa, one observer believes the new league will serve as a form of cultural exchange.

Scott Brooks is associate director of Arizona State University’s Global Sport Institute. He said when an American sport like basketball becomes more visible in a foreign country, it affects both cultures.

"It's not just American culture taking over. We always get a piece of other cultures coming back," he said. "That's what really makes this exciting."

Brooks said something like the BAL is more than basketball. “It is building leaders in Africa,” he said.

Those interested in following the BAL can hear VOA’s broadcasts of the games on the radio in Africa. VOA will cover the games in English, French, Portuguese and two African languages: Kinyarwanda and Wolof.

Video of the games will be on the internet at TheBAL.com and NBA.com.

I’m Dan Friedell.

Dan Friedell adapted this story for Learning English based a report by Voice of America’s Sonny Young and Carol Guensburg.

Will you follow the Basketball Africa League this year? Let us know. Write to us in the Comments Section and visit our Facebook page.

Words in This Story

title – n. the position of being champion in a sport

promote– v. to make people aware of something, such as a new product

scout – n. a person whose job it is to look for talented performers

teenage – adj. between 13 and 19 years old

potential – n. a quality that something has that can be developed to make it better

global – adj. involving the entire world

XS
SM
MD
LG