Remember his name. We will probably hear more about him soon.
South Sudan surprisingly defeated China 89-69 after narrowly losing to Puerto Rico on Monday. In the last match of the basic group on Wednesday against Serbia, as expected, they lost 83:115, but they still leave a positive impression on the World Cup. In addition to the Chicago Bulls player Carlik Jones, he also had the already mentioned young man who is 218 cm tall.
Khaman Maluach played 16 minutes against China and scored one point, becoming the third youngest player in the entire history of the Basketball World Cup. The coaches also used him in the key match against Serbia.
He is already considered a remarkable player with a promising future. In 2025, he should participate in the NBA draft as an elite candidate, thereby starting his career in the best league in the world.
Maluach has a bit of an advantage in that he hasn’t actually lived in his unstable homeland for a long time. He started playing basketball as a boy in 2019 in Uganda when he was just 12 years old and after two years he joined NBA Academy Africa high school in Senegal as a freshman. At the beginning of August, he was already named the most valuable player of the NBA Basketball Without Borders Africa camp.
Maluach, who will graduate from high school in the summer of 2025, already has attractive scholarship offers from Duke, UCLA and Georgetown. But he also has the option of going straight to the NBA draft.
Participation in the World Cup is another important advertisement for him, moreover in a situation where his team, as the biggest outsider, remained in the fight for the second round after the victory over China.
The youngster can thank first assistant national coach Luol Deng, a guy who is one of South Sudan’s biggest basketball names, for his involvement in the national team. He played for five NBA teams for fifteen years, as well as for Great Britain at international level, and today he is a major figure in the high politics of sports in his country. He took charge not only of the promotion of basketball, but also of the whole sport. That is why he also included the remarkable youngster Maluach in the team.
By the way, the victory over China created a wave of sports enthusiasm in South Sudan and was the best impetus for the future. The young Maluach is on the verge of becoming the next positive role model for the young generation after the great South Sudanese basketball players of the past, Luol Deng or Manute Bol.
2023-08-31 12:51:27
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