The guy was big, bigger than life in his native Ghana. He didn’t have the opportunity to play in big arenas, his stage was mostly outdoor courts, when he was doing his 360° aerial dunk and once he jumped over a car and dunked. He was bigger than life, a star. He was Meme Falconer, the most famous Ghana player of all time. “He was the Kobe Bryant of Ghana. The guy was unbelievable, the stuff he was doing when he was younger,” Ben Bentil says.
Ben was really young, he was a promising volleyball player, he was good at soccer too, as a striker. But one beautiful day, he got to know Meme Falconer. He was doing his stuff at one outdoor court and Ben just like all the other kids, was in awe of him. “He was on tv, doing commercials, he was huge,” he recalled. Meme spotted him. Ben was a young kid, 12 years old, and big and athletics. A ton of promising potential. “For a guy like that to even work with me and become more than just a coach, but a big brother, was huge,” Bentil says. To make a long story short, Meme Falconer, the local Kobe Bryant, became his coach, his mentor, his friend. “Meme was a huge factor on who I am today, because he took me under his wing as a big brother, and as a father figure. He helped me become a man, not only as a basketball player. He gave me the skills, something that he possessed because he was an icon back home. So, he was somebody we looked up to and just the fact that he passed all that to me, and somehow live the dream he wanted to live for him had a big impact for me”.
Technically speaking, Meme Falconer is the Ghana’s coach, only they don’t have a senior national team. They are working on it. “We have players playing all over the world – Bentil says -, college, professionals, all type of levels, that they want to come back and play. Hopefully we can make it happen before I’m too old and can’t play no more.” Truthfully, Ghana has some promising junior national teams and basketball is growing. Meme Falconer is the godfather, Ben Bentil is the guy who experienced the most success. “Now, I want to pave the way for the younger guys coming up. I know kids that are looking up to me and say I wanna be where Ben got to,” Bentil pointed out, feeling like he is not just representing himself and his big family, but a whole country.
When he was 15, Bentil left his native country an embarked on a long journey to the U.S. Falconer found a way to put him in a couple of high school. He played basketball and soccer two. “I had a couple of chance to go to college and play soccer, I was good, really good, but by that time I was already in love with basketball,” he recalls. The first stop was in Pennsylvania, at Haverford, then he moved to St. Andrew’s, in the close state of Delaware where he met Austin Tilghman, a point guard equipped with good talent. They became friends. Or better than that. They became brothers. “The transition from Ghana to the States was pretty hard because I’ve always been a mama’s boy. Being away from my mother was the hardest part, I love the food that my mom was cooking, so not being able to get for holidays the attention of my mom was hard. The culture is different, but at the same time I knew the mission. It was an opportunity to get better myself and get a better life for my family, my mom. So, it was like Ok, you can cry about it but at the same time be a man and just deal with it,” Bentil says. Then the Tilghman family entered the picture. “His family took me as their son, their middle son, so Austin is my little brother. Blood might not be the same, but he is everything to me”, he points out. Tilghman has played basketball at Monmouth, then moved to Europa and now he is playing for Ravenna. “He is really excited that I’m playing a couple of hours away from him. So, he will the chance to come and see me play, and if I have the chance I will go and see him play. He had a big impact on who I am, his family had a big impact, they took me and helped me, dropped me to practices, to games, provided shelter. Austin is my family, everybody who knows me, knows that Austin is my family”.
They briefly separated when Bentil went to Providence to play college ball. The first year was just ok, but during his sophomore season he exploded on the scene. He became a star, a household name. He started 32 of Providence’s 35 games, scored in double-figures on 31 occasions, scored at least 20 points 21 times. He scored 31 points and 13 rebounds during an overtime win on the home court of Villanova, in Philadelphia. He scored a career-high 42 points at Marquette. The Friars made the NCAA Tournament and he was terrific again. They were eliminated by North Carolina, the eventual champions. He was named to the All-Big East first-team. “My freshman season, I had seniors in front of me. They’ve been playing big-time. We had Kris Dunn, we had LaDontae Henton, we had all these guys, so I was learning, I followed the lead and wait for my chance. When it was my time, I just took over, I put a lot of work done that summer because I wanted to be a leader, I wanted to be respected because I’m big in respect. This is how you get respect. In the end, I think it was more about me getting my chances, the confidence, and the work I put in”, he says.
He was so good during his sophomore season that he cannot stay at Providence any longer. He also had a family life to improve back home. He declared for the NBA draft and was selected by the Boston Celtics. “It was an unbelievable feeling, for a kid from Ghana, with a single mother, four brothers… if you told me that I was going to America, play basketball, have my name being called on draft night I’d said this is not possible.” Possible? Yes, it actually happened, because of “hard work, luck, and meeting guys that made everything possible. I was not just proud to represent not only me but a whole country, not my family, but the whole country,” he explains. He never made the Boston Celtics team, but he was signed by the Dallas Mavericks and became the first Ghanaian player to step on the court in the NBA, in 2017. Eventually, Bentil played in France, Spain, China and finally Peristeri and Panathinaikos in Greece.
“That was great – Bentil says -, I mean the experience of playing in the EuroLeague which is the highest level possible in Europe, the best competition, where you face the best of the best every night. It taught me a lot about European basketball, what you need to do to help. You have to come ready to play day in day out, can’t take no day off. Panathinaikos became home to me; Athens became home because I stayed there a long time.” With Panathinaikos, he managed to win twice the Greek championship. Then he moved briefly to Istanbul and finally came to Milan. When he was called, Bentil received another call. “My guy, Dinos Mitoglou,” he recalls. “He was actually the first guy who called me and talked to me about this move. The Coach asked him about me, because Dinos and I we played well together. Outside the court, we are good friends. I was happy for him that he signed here, so when I got this opportunity, I knew it was great, because we talked when we were at Panathinaikos how it’d be cool to play with each other again.”
Bentil is different from Mitoglou as a player. He showed his skills right from the beginning. “I’m a bully – he describes himself -, but I’m a nice bully. I’m going to provide a lot of energy, which is something I’ll bring every time, and just go all in hard. I play extremely aggressive. I’m a high energetic player.”
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