Olympian and former SA national coach Sam Vincent says the venture of Mamelodi Sundowns, Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates into the basketball market could ignite even greater interest in the sport.
African football giants Petro de Luanda in Angola, and Al Ahly and Zamalek in Egypt have already adopted the concept of being multi-sport clubs and have reaped the rewards of being successful basketball clubs in Africa.
All of those teams have gone on to win the Basketball Africa League in the past five seasons, Zamalek in 2021, Al Ahly in 2023 and Petro de Luanda recently in 2024.
The BAL is the biggest basketball club tournament on the continent.
SA became a member of Fiba in 1992, but basketball is still struggling to rise the ranks in national sporting codes compared with rugby, soccer, cricket, hockey and netball.
Vincent, an NBA champion with the Boston Celtics in 1986, has seen a fair share of that struggle first-hand.
He owned and served as player-coach of SA’s Professional Basketball League (PBL) Cape Town Kings in the 1990s and mentored the men’s national basketball team to historic achievements, including a ninth-place finish at the 2003 Fiba AfroBasket and a landmark victory over Senegal, a powerhouse in African basketball.
Despite those strides, the same SA men’s team returned to the international fold only in early 2024, after being inactive since 2017 because the federation withdrew from several qualification competitions for several reasons, with the lack of finances topping the list.
Though SA has its administration woes, the country is still regarded as well-resourced for basketball, especially when it comes to infrastructure.
The NBA’s head office for its operations in Africa is based in Sandton, while the majority of Basketball Without Borders in Africa development programmes have been held in SA.
Despite the sport not being the first choice, the country racked up a good attendance record in 2024 BAL when it was hosted in Pretoria.
Those impressive attendance numbers at the Sunbet Arena in March 2024 were good enough to convince the organisers to let the country host the playoffs and finals of BAL 5 in June 2025.
Now Vincent is pushing for the country’s big three football clubs to get involved in the BAL and is dreaming of what it would do for the development and growth of the game.
“If there’s a chance for the football clubs to get into basketball it would be great for the children in SA,” Vincent said in an exclusive interview with the Daily Dispatch.
“I’m sure the guys in the BAL with Amadou Gallo Fall [BAL president] are in those chats.
“Because it is a great idea to support the growth of the sport and is positive for the communities.
“Those teams would draw numbers of supporters.
“Ultimately, that would allow youth to have big dreams and goals in a new sport,” he said.
Vincent also said the exposure SA players got in BAL would eventually lead to the country getting its first recognised NBA player.
He said the floodgates would open, similar to what had transpired in South Sudan, which represented Africa in the Paris Olympics.
The Cape Town Tigers’ Samkelo Cele became one of the few SA-born players to participate in the NBA2K Summer League. He was invited by the New York Knicks.
“The impact of having one or two players in the NBA can also make a difference because now those players will be playing in a resourced NBA that has a whole network of employees, staff and assist with those players when they get back home,” Vincent said.
“I think that has been part of the reason for the quick rise of South Sudan.
“I think SA, now with the BAL, will start experiencing that same sort of growth.
“I don’t know when we will have our first SA NBA player, but I think that is close to happening,” he said.
The BAL 5 season will begin with the Kalahari Conference group phase at the Prince Moulay Abdellah Sports Complex in Rabat from April 5-13.
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