“While by name it may sound like a glamorous job, in reality it's a difficult job. It's a job that you will work your ass off like a houseboy.” — Sam Ahmedu, NBA Scout
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: Jon Miller
First, a quick confession. When I was I kid, my father built a crude wooden basketball backboard in front of our house. It was a little too high, and the net was made of chain instead of string, and the ground beneath it was uneven, and when I'd shoot and miss I'd have to chase the ball as fast as I could to keep it from rolling into the creek. But I'd spend hours practicing, and — here's the confessional part — I'd always try to time my shots for when a car was passing. One day, I was convinced, I would make a nifty move, the ball would go in, and a car would screech to a halt. And out would step a man, and he'd say, "Kid, you've got something special." And I'd be on the road to fame and glory.
When I told this to Sam Ahmedu, he nodded as if he'd heard it a thousand times. "We all have our dreams," he said, and smiled.
I went to meet Ahmedu with a fair amount of skepticism. If you've seen the movie Hoop Dreams, you know how hard it is to get anywhere in basketball, let alone make it to the NBA. It's one of the most competitive job markets on Earth. Thirty teams with twelve players each, maybe three or four of whom will lose their jobs over the course of a season. So 100 or 120 openings, and tens of thousands of would-be stars, some spectacularly talented, grinding it out, day after day, praying not to get injured, praying for the shot to go in at the moment that the scout is watching. Trying to convince themselves that they've got "something special." Trying to convince themselves that the game will be their ticket out of whatever situation they are stuck in.
Get a bad coach, play on a bad team, suffer a bad injury and the dream is over. There are plenty of others waiting for a chance.
It was hard enough to make it in 1984, when Nigeria's Hakeem Olajuwon was taken first in the NBA draft after a high-profile career at the University of Houston. He was competing against players from more than 1,000 American colleges and universities. Today the NBA draws from nearly 30 countries, many of which have their own pro leagues, not to mention from American high schools and the increasingly competitive Continental Basketball Association. For any given player, the odds of making it are staggeringly low. It's one thing to celebrate the NBA's new diversity, I thought as I prepared for my trip. Surely it's another to encourage a gangly kid from an African slum even to entertain the idea that he can make it.
But I felt none of that skepticism during my days shadowing Sam in Nigeria. I saw kids laughing, playing, having fun. And I saw Sam saying nothing to discourage anyone. He seemed to believe that the game could save any kid who wanted to be saved by it, just as it had saved him from becoming a "rascal" as a boy. And indeed it has been a way for dozens of his protegés to study abroad, both at high school and university, and even, in some cases, to make a decent living at it.
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