Although, it has been four years after the men’s national team’s outing at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, we cannot help but wonder if the outcome would have been different if certain things did not happen, or if circumstances were different.
DTigers’ centre and team’s number one hype man Olaseni “Shane” Lawal suffered an injury in our first game of the tournament, an injury that sidelined him throughout the tournament and for quite a while after. Our guard, Ben Uzoh also battled with health issues. The most baffling though, was that Stan Okoye did not play any of our five group stage games.
We got some closure on this when he explained why during his Instagram Live session with the NBBF yesterday that it was the coach’s decision.
”It was just the coach’s decision. It’s fine...I mean it’s fine now but at that time obviously I wanted to play. I felt like I could contribute to help us win. Even if it wasn’t scoring or whatever, I felt like I could do something. But it was the coach’s decision and I respected that. But it just motivated me to work harder the next year”
Okoye was a part of the DTigers team that played at the 2019 FIBA World Cup and he plays professionally at Herbalife Gran Canaria in Spain
Image - FIBA
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