LeBron James barely stopped the unthinkable from happening.
With 10 seconds left, South Sudan led the United States by one point in an exhibition before the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. The 43-point underdogs, a team of mostly refugee players, fought their way to the end with the best in the world, but a James layup sealed the deal for the Americans.
That tough group — including 18-year-old Duke freshman Khaman Maluach — admirably represented their home country, which has gone through intense civil war in its short 13-year history. South Sudan is younger than Maluach and is the newest country in the world. However, its basketball scene has exploded due to significant investment from former Blue Devil Luol Deng, the president of the South Sudan Basketball Federation.
Maluach was the youngest player on that roster. But how did someone who picked up a basketball for the first time in 2019 play on his country’s Olympic team?
When he was 14 years old, Maluach was scouted and accepted into the NBA Academy Africa in Senegal, the youngest player ever to join an NBA Academy. This program is part of a larger network by the NBA to assist talented players globally to reach their aspirations while playing in their home continents.
In 2017, the NBA launched schools in Africa, India and Australia; Mexico received one the following year. These new institutions provide an alternative to prep schools in Europe and the United States — previously the most common routes for top talent from the Global South. The NBA Academies directly remove barriers for their participants to reach their full potential, whether that be in college basketball, the G-league or even the NBA.
While NBA Academies focus on year-round basketball training, they provide dormitories and education services with world-class teachers, performance staff and professional-level coaches. Their schedules, however, are different from those at U.S. prep schools, as academy members play exhibitions against professional teams and other NBA Academy schools.
“Once you walk into the Academy, our system is for you to succeed. It’s not just basketball. Success looks different for everyone and it’s a 360 holistic approach towards success,” said Roland Houston, technical director of NBA Academy Africa, in an interview with The Chronicle. “We’re very fortunate and we put a team in place to arm these young people with information so when they leave us, they’re prepared to succeed in whatever venture that they have in front of them.”
Maluach clearly was a blossoming product. A 7-foot-2 center with a natural rim protection ability and a functional 3-point jump shot already makes college coaches salivate. But it was Maluach’s mentality that impressed Houston the most, which he believes will serve the freshman well at Duke.
“A kid like [Khaman] is a no-brainer,” Houston said. “He approaches things in a methodical way where he knows he wants to succeed. He doesn’t want to be around anything that’s not conducive for his success, and he’s laser focused on succeeding.”
A typical day at the NBA Academy is intended to model college life. For Maluach, that started with a 6 a.m. gym session. He had class for most of the day and came back for afternoon practice, and repeated that every day. The Academy provided him tutoring services when necessary — its emphasis on academic achievement is evident.
The nascent initiative has proven successful, with prospects from the academies graduating to professional leagues, college basketball and the NBA. Top alums include Josh Giddey, Bennedict Mathurin, Santiago Vescovi and Ulrich Chomche — the first graduate from NBA Academy Africa to get drafted directly into the NBA. Houston, who has multiple decades of college basketball coaching experience at George Mason, George Washington and La Salle, serves as a prime example of the kind of proven leader the NBA looks to employ.
“You just don’t have to take kids from Africa and put them in the [US] to grow,” Houston said. “That was one of the key elements that we’re extremely proud of, that a kid can come from [Africa] and go to a prestigious university such as Duke, or get drafted straight from the continent.”
Maluach isn’t the only NBA Academy product on this Blue Devil roster. Junior guard and Australia native Tyrese Proctor joined the NBA Global Academy in Canberra at 15, and he described that training as consequential in his development.
“It’s produced multiple NBA players, so I think that sort of speaks for itself,” Proctor said at ACC Media Day in October. “The NBA Academy changed my life and helped me out so much. Leaving home at 15 was a big sacrifice and risk, but they welcomed me with open arms and I loved every moment of it.”
As a result, the two knew each other through the academy network, and Proctor has been influential on “his brother’s” transition into Duke and America. Prior to preparing for the 2024 Paris Games, Maluach came to Durham and lived with Proctor.
“Tyrese has been helping me a lot because we both have the same background as we’re from overseas,” Maluach said. “Tyrese is teaching me how to handle everything and I spend a lot of time with him.”
Even though the academies are a closer alternative to schools in the United States, it’s a big sacrifice for 14- and 15-year-old kids to move away from everything they know. For Maluach, who lived in Uganda after his parents fled South Sudan, Senegal was more than 3,000 miles away. It was his first ever trip on a plane. It’s essential for Houston to form a bond between his players through basketball, because they come from different cultures and speak various languages.
“We try to build a sense of community and environment that’s conducive for growth, and it’s like a brotherhood,” Houston said. “[Building culture] took a period of time. It took leadership from certain guys and when they understood that we were trying to build something special, they embraced it.”
With only a few spots in each academy — Maluach was one of 21 in NBA Academy Africa — each admission is carefully adjudicated.
The NBA Academies use the Jr. NBA, a network of leagues for kids 6-14 across the world, to scout talent. These programs get kids of all levels started with fundamental work and organized basketball practice. There are seven Jr. NBA/WNBA leagues across Africa, including one in South Sudan established in 2023 through a partnership with the Luol Deng Foundation.
“The Jr. NBA is a huge part of development globally. We have a network of scouts or relationships of coaches that we utilize in order to identify players,” Houston said. “For example, you have a coach in the Congo, Nigeria or Senegal with relationships, and they will say, ‘Coach, here is a kid. He’s pretty good, he’s special. He just needs an opportunity.’”
That sentiment rings true, because these NBA Academies decrease the gap in basketball infrastructure across the world with the simple promise of a chance. With a multitude of untapped potential, the game can reach new heights and populations. This was the case with Maluach, who was spotted by an NBA Academy Africa scout which changed his life.
“Obviously you can see with what happened in South Sudan, a lot of the kids on the continent — they just need opportunities,” Houston said. “I think with the more opportunities that they have, the more growth that you will see on the continent.”
Another key reason that the NBA Academies have such a gap to fill: Soccer. Outside of the U.S., kids play soccer before anything else (Proctor, for his part, still dominates his Blue Devil teammates in FIFA). As a result, Houston explained that while Americans tend to start playing basketball in the first decade of their lives, it’s common for Africans to start between the ages of 12 and 14, like Maluach did. The quality of coaches the NBA Academy provides, then, is even more essential; they have to accelerate the learning process.
“Most of these kids grow up with their feet, where we grow up with our hands,” Houston said.
The talent is there, so the future of basketball is clearly a more globalized game. As South Sudan’s Wenyen Gabriel emotionally noted following his country’s Olympic performance, he witnessed 7-footers herding cows in South Sudan because of the resource gap and lack of opportunities for basketball development.
“The kids that we touch, our focus is for them to be the best athlete, basketball player and human being that they could possibly be while taking advantage of what the NBA has provided,” Houston said.
Maluach grew up not knowing anything about basketball, but was inspired by highlight reels of Zion Williamson. This is how he explains the gravity of his accomplishments back home, telling his cousins he plays “at Zion Williamson’s school.”
Draped with his hometown flag on his back, Maluach is an inspiration for 12 million — and more — an ocean away. He proved that a country without an indoor basketball court can produce a player at one of the United States’ biggest basketball programs.
The NBA Academy gave 14-year-old Maluach a shot at making his dreams a reality. And 15-year-old Proctor’s. And hundreds of deserving players across the world.
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Ranjan Jindal is a Trinity junior and sports editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.