Last September, as the celebration picked up steam inside a cramped South Sudanese locker room in Araneta Coliseum in Manila, Luol Deng paused to reflect on surrealness of it all. How Deng, a 15-season NBA veteran, had come to spend the last four years in a new role: president of the South Sudan Basketball Federation. How South Sudan, which won its independence in 2011, had even fielded a national team. How the country—his country, the world’s youngest country—had punched its ticket to the Olympics. “Honestly, I didn’t think we would get here this quickly,” says Deng. “It’s kind of insane.”
Here, or rather, there, is Paris, where South Sudan, after knocking off Angola to clinch its berth as the highest-finishing African team at the FIBA World Cup, will compete this summer. In 2019, Deng, still settling into retirement, got a call from his brother, Deng Deng. The government needs someone to run the basketball program. Would you be interested? Luol was born in what was then known as Sudan in 1985. When he was 5, with the country in the throes of a civil war, he and his family moved to Egypt, where he learned basketball from another Sudanese refugee, Manute Bol, who then in the midst of a 13-year NBA career. Five years later, Deng landed in London, then the U.S., where he developed into an elite high school prospect.
