183 Qualifying

I knew one day I would want to build a business in this country. I didn't know what business yet, but after touring the place, I was interested in doing some business in this country in the future. I got to know some other players too while I was at it

Here's a list of my new teammates

Starters

Pg Ola

Sg Eazy( the one and only)

Sf Alika

Pf Tope

C Adeda

Bench

Pg Femi

Sg Azi

Sf Mongo

Pf Ayo

C Tobi

Ola, Tope, and Adeda were my go-to people. Ola, even though he was the shortest in the team, he was built like a horse. Ola could run the whole game, which surprised me when I watched him play the first time. When the fourth quarter had come, everybody else was tired but Ola this guy was still running circles around people, and his court vision was godly. Ola was able to make bounce passes from the half-court which surprised me, not only did he have lower body strength and stamina but his upper body strength too was crazy.

Tope, of course, we all knew that his leaping ability was outstanding. The only thing was his shooting ability, which he needed to work on, but I'm sure that with his work ethics, he would be able to achieve that in no time if he stays in the gym and works on his shot for several hours, his muscle memory should be able to register and he was a great rebounder too at that.

Adeda was 7 ft tall and quite a beast on the court. Even though he didn't have much strength due to his bony structure, he could get over many defenders due to his height, and he could also hit the three-point, which was a plus since most Center defenders guarded the post. 

Adeda could step out of the post and shoot the ball well, but he was quite a streaky shooter. Once he got tired, he got lazy, so I had to work on him with his stamina to get it up. The rest weren't worth mentioning, g

but they played their parts right, but it wasn't good enough to face off against the USA when we finally had the opportunity to.

For the past week that we had together for the training camp, I worked them to the bone even though the coach was surprised as I had spotted their weaknesses right away and started working on it slowly. Ola was just short, and there was no way I can work on that, so I showed him a few new plays that I learned from my experience; as he started to incorporate them into his arsenal, he learned quite a lot and his photogenic memory was great as he remembered everything or at least tried to.

I decided to sit out and watch them play. If they needed help, then I would come in to help them out, but it seemed like I didn't need to do anything in that game. All they needed was a good strategy, and I found that after the first quarter of seeing how they played. 

By the time the fourth quarter had come the Venezuela team were tired due to the stamina the Nigerian team had. They kept running full speed at them at every play, causing the non-fit Venezuela team to be run down as we won that game by 10 points with Ola being the star player which surprised me because I thought Tope would shine in these games to come, but in this game, we needed somebody who could run a lot and who could be fast and Ola was just the right person for that.

Lithuania was the next team that we had to play, and that was a hard match because they had great stamina just like us, so after three quarters, we're down by 10 points. I was still proud of my guys because that was quite a good team, so I came in the game during the 4th quarter with 5 minutes left to play the game. The whole Lithuania team was wondering who I was.

Well, Ola brought down the ball and saw that I had passed my defender as I spread out my arm; he threw it up without even thinking twice as I caught the ball in mid-air and shot it for mid-range points closing the lead down to eight points.

They couldn't believe I had made a shot like that and Ola felt good passing that ball because most of the time, nobody in his team could make a shot like that but seeing me make it from mid-range while catching and turning to shoot it surprised him as it hit the bottom of the net.

Next play the away team scored, bringing the lead right back where it was, I needed to start making threes to close the lead down, so this time, when Ola brought down the ball, I asked for it once again at the three-point line; he passed it to me using a bounce pass I caught it and the defender was all over me. I pumped faked causing him to jump up in the air. I sidestepped to my left and took the shot from the three-point line bringing us down to seven points.

The away team thought that it was luck that I had made that so they didn't pay me any mind as we continued to play. My defender had finally received the ball but just when he was about to take a shot I had tapped the ball just a little bit causing it to leave his hand when he was trying to shoot it. 

Human nature was funny just because I made a shot on him, he felt like he had to do the same thing to redeem himself so I quickly took the ball down to court, stopped at the three-point line and took the shot and now we were down by only four points with three minutes to go in the game.