Josh Nebo, Olimpia’s Rocket Man

24/09/2024 19:56

Nebo led the EuroLeague in total rebounds and offensive rebounds last year: "The key is to play hard, have a motor that always runs, play with the desire to get your hands on the ball"

“Josh Nebo went crazy out there. He jumped, he rebounded, he dunked and blocked shots for 45 minutes”, Coach Ettore Messina said at the end of the Super Cup won in Bologna speaking of Olimpia’s “Rocket Man”. In the championship game he scored 20 points and over the two games he shot 70 percent from the field. Here we present his story again.

At the beginning, the athlete of a large family of Nigerian origins but transplanted to Houston, Texas, was Kimberly. Kim Nebo was the basketball star of the Cypress Lake High School team. She was so good that after scoring 1,292 points over four years she became the school all-time leading scorer. “My older sister was good, she had a big following in high school.  I was just her little brother. But watching her, the success she was having, I started to follow basketball more and at a certain point I decided to try it myself, to follow in her footsteps. But I started late, in high school. That’s how I fell in love with basketball by following my sister, training with her”, Josh Nebo says. He is the new Olimpia’s center, coming from Maccabi, in his fourth season in the EuroLeague. Last year he was the competition leading rebounder and leading offensive rebounder. Her story began imitating her older sister, one of three that he has.

Kim Nebo eventually played at Southern Illinois where in her senior year, the 2016/17 season, averaged over 11 points and grabbed more than seven rebounds per game and was named student player of the year in her school conference. At the time, Josh Nebo was a gradually emerging star at Cypress Lake High in Houston, but it was De’Aron Fox – now the star point-guard of the Sacramento Kings – who was attracting all the attention. Josh was eager to follow her footsteps and play at a Division I college as well. But starting to play late didn’t help. “I had only one scholarship offer to play Division One basketball, that of St. Francis, Pennsylvania, far from home. But I had no other options,” he admits.

But in the meantime, the skinny high school kid was about to give way to a physical, explosive athlete. In his second season at St. Francis, Nebo was named the Northeast conference’s Defensive Player of the Year, finishing in excess of 12 points and eight rebounds per game. However, the level of competition was average at best. The desire to get closer to home, thus allowing his family to attend his games, to gain greater exposure pushed him to return to Texas, to Texas A&M. The problem is that in these cases, back then, you were forced to sit out a year. “Actually, sitting out for a year was crucial to my career. Being out allowed me to develop my body, to learn how to work in the weight room and also on the court. In that year I transformed my body. I was very skinny; I had no muscle. But that year I focused on my body; I improved on the court. I think it changed the trajectory of my career.”

Nebo’s first season at Texas A&M was decent, not exceptional. Above all the team struggled, finishing under 50 percent. Coach Billy Kennedy was fired after eight seasons. He was replaced by Buzz Williams from Virginia Tech. “We’ve had some ups and downs, we’ve changed a couple of coaches, there have been good moments and some bad ones. But I had fun on the court, I improved as a player and built relationships that are lasting to this day,” says Nebo. In his last year of college, which began with a muscle injury, he was better both in terms of team and individual results (he averaged 12.5 points and 6.2 rebounds per game).

But it was the Covid year, and it ruined his plans. Nebo would have liked to undergo the ritual of NBA tryouts, travel from one corner of the country to another and be seen, perhaps get an invitation to the training camp, play in the summer leagues, in short, follow the typical process of the player who aspires to try to get his foot in the NBA without a big exposure. “Covid denied me the opportunity to do workouts for NBA teams. The summer leagues were canceled, and I wasn’t able to participate, see where I was at, get feedback. I was left in the dark, I didn’t know how they saw me. I knew I wouldn’t be drafted, and I really needed the workouts, get more exposure. But I couldn’t,” he recalls. At that point, he only had one option. “Hapoel Eilat offered me a guaranteed contract. I thought if I played well, I could come back later. But my first year in Europe worked out really well. Coming to Europe I think was the best decision I ever made in my career. Much better than wandering around the NBA aimlessly.”

In Israel he immediately played at a very high level. He led the Israeli league in rebounds, among other things. For a rookie, handling his professional debut, in a foreign country, during the COVID era was challenging to say the least. “It was a culture shock. It was my first year abroad and everything was closed; therefore, I couldn’t even go to the restaurant. My life was all practice and go home. But fortunately, I had a great coach (Ariel Beit-Halahmy) and veterans on the team who took me under their wings, protected me and guided me. Especially Joe Ragland.” As a veteran, Ragland has become a leader on the teams he played for, much more mature than the young gun we saw in Milan. “Joe Ragland was the best thing that could have happened to me – explains Nebo -. On the court he obviously made everything easier for me, but even off the court he taught me a lot, he made me understand what to focus on. I believe he was also decisive in my eventual growth: he was my mentor and a sort of coach. We watched films together, he critiqued my game, he guided me in my development. I appreciated him a lot.”

 

Even then, Nebo had attracted Olimpia’s attention. He finished the year at Hapoel then took the leap and landed to the EuroLeague, in Kaunas. “During my rookie season in Israel I had become a big fan of the EuroLeague, I watched all the games, I followed all the teams, so when I went to Kaunas I had a clear idea of ​​what to expect, how things would go. I was somewhat prepared for what I would find. But it was still hard to adjust The level of competition is very high, the talent is extreme, the demands, the fans. It was very different from what I had experienced my rookie year.”

 

In Kaunas, despite his young age in a league dominated by mature men, and his rookie status, Nebo averaged 8.8 points per game, shot over 64 percent from the field, and grabbed 6.2 rebounds in 22 minutes on the court. This was not a Zalgiris team to be underestimated with Thomas Walkup, Rokas Jokubaitis, Marius Grigonis, Nigel Hayes-Davis among others. His season was good enough to allow another move to Maccabi. In his first season, he averaged 7.4 points and 6.2 rebounds per game while splitting duties with Alex Poythress. But in the second he made a leap, averaging over the double figures in points, with a career high in field goal shooting accuracy (66.7 percent), in free throws (71.4 percent) and obviously in rebounds. “Every year I think I have been able to improve a little – he explains -. I think it was key to focus on the process and not on the results. I didn’t pay too much attention to I looked in games, but I was paying attention to the daily work, adding something, watching films, trying to understand how I could improve and feel comfortable on the court. It’s all about having consistency in your daily work.”

 

Notably, Nebo led the EuroLeague in total rebounds and offensive rebounds last year. As Kyle Hines has always said, being a great rebounder is not necessarily a matter of skills but of will. “I don’t know if there’s a secret to rebounding. It’s not that I don’t want to reveal my secrets. The key is to play hard, have a motor that always runs, play with the desire to get your hands on the ball and understand that this is my job on the team. I want to be the best at doing my job. I’m proud to try to be the best at what I do. It’s fun for me to get after rebounds and try to get them all,” he says.

 

In Kaunas and Tel Aviv, Nebo played for two of the largest and most vibrant fanbases in Europe: “Playing for two fanbases like those of Zalgiris and Maccabi makes you more proud of what you are doing, you don’t want to let the fans down because you receive always support, not only during games, but also when you walk down the street and they meet you. You understand that what you are doing, to them is something bigger.” In Milan, he will get to know another type of fanbase, a big event fanbase, but in those moments it has nothing less of anyone. “I decided to come here because this is a great club, with great ambitions and wants to return to the top of the competition also in the EuroLeague, perhaps returning to the Final Four. The club and I share the same goals and also the same values: to win, to get to the Final Four, to compete at the highest level. Olimpia has the goals and ambitions that I also demand from my team.”

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