{"id":215329,"date":"2021-05-14T19:24:24","date_gmt":"2021-05-14T17:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/?p=215329"},"modified":"2021-05-14T19:24:24","modified_gmt":"2021-05-14T17:24:24","slug":"basketball-africa-league-unveils-team-rosters-ahead-of-inaugural-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/basketball-africa-league-unveils-team-rosters-ahead-of-inaugural-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Basketball Africa League Unveils Team Rosters Ahead of Inaugural Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

BAL Rosters Feature 154 Players from 24 Countries Across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the U.S.; Rwanda\u2019s Patriots Basketball Club to Face Nigeria\u2019s Rivers Hoopers in First BAL Game on May 16 at 4:00 p.m. CAT \/ 10 a.m. ET.<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

The Basketball Africa League (BAL) today unveiled the rosters of all 12 BAL teams (https:\/\/bit.ly\/3tMRoib<\/a>) ahead of the league\u2019s inaugural season, which tips off Sunday, May 16 at 4:00 p.m. CAT \/ 10 a.m. ET at the Kigali Arena in Rwanda.\u00a0BAL rosters feature 154 players from 24 countries across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the U.S.*<\/sup><\/p>\n

Each of the 12 teams, which come from 12 African countries, will have up to 13 players (12 active and one inactive), at least nine of whom are citizens in their respective team\u2019s home country and up to four of whom are from other countries, with no more than two players per team from outside of Africa.<\/p>\n

Ben Uzoh, who joined Nigeria\u2019s Rivers Hoopers, is poised to become the first former NBA player to play in the BAL, having played for the New Jersey Nets, Cleveland Cavaliers and Toronto Raptors from 2010-12.\u00a0He was also a member of the Nigeria Senior Men\u2019s National Team at the 2016 Olympics, FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 and FIBA AfroBasket in 2013 and 2015.<\/p>\n

Nine players bring NBA G League experience to the BAL\u2019s first season: Brandon Jay Costner and Prince Ibeh (Rwanda\u2019s Patriots BBC); Myck Kabongo and Demarcus Holland (Mozambique\u2019s Ferrovi\u00e0rio de Maputo), Ibrahima Thomas (Mali\u2019s AS Police); Uzoh, Taren Sullivan and Robert Christopher Daniels (Rivers Hoopers); and Ater Majok (Tunisia\u2019s US Monastir).\u00a0Twenty-one BAL players have NCAA Division 1 experience, with 11 of the 12 teams featuring at least one former Division 1 player.<\/p>\n

BAL teams feature a combined 19 players who previously participated in Basketball Without Borders (BWB) Africa, the NBA and FIBA\u2019s global basketball development and community outreach program for top prospects from across the continent, including Mohab Yasser Abdelaty Abdallatif (Egypt\u2019s Zamalek).\u00a0 Abdallatif is poised to graduate from NBA Academy Africa this year and becomes the first NBA Academy prospect to play in the BAL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BAL rosters feature 154 players from 24 countries across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the U.S<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":213524,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[325,399],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-215329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa","category-nba"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2021\/05\/logo.jpg","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215329"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=215329"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=215329"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=215329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}