It Is An Honour To Play For Nigeria

Nigeria’s leading scorer at the Afrobasket 2011 in Madagascar, Derrick Obasohan, is a player who feels enormous pride whenever he dons the national team shirt.

Obasohan revealed that it brings him great honour for him to represent his fatherland, Nigeria, on international stage.

Obasohan averaged 16.6 points at the tournament in Antananarivo and poured in 19 points in the bronze-medal game triumph over Ivory Coast.

He said: “ I definitely will be playing for Nigeria in Olympic qualifying,” he said to FIBA.com.

“Although I was born in the US, my parents, grandparents and brothers were born in Nigeria.

“To me, it means a lot to represent Nigeria.

“I have been talking to a lot of players who want to play for the national team.

“All of them show great passion to represent Nigeria. For many of us, it means a lot to play for Nigeria.

Obasohun also said the D’Tigers will have to dig deep to make it out of the Olympic Qualifying Tournament considering the top flying nations they will be playing against.

“It is not going to be easy to play teams like Russia, Lithuania, but we’ll play as hard as we can to make a dream come true.”

The Ayo Bakare -led team had hoped to win gold at Afrobasket 2011 and qualify directly for the London Games but in the end they had to settle for a bronze medal and a spot in the 12-team FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament, which will be held from 2-8 July, 2012.

The Texas-born Obasohan, who is playing for DKV Joventut in Spain’s Liga Endesa and averaging 11 points per contest, first represented Nigeria at the 2006 FIBA World Championship in Japan.

Last summer, even with the absence of key players, he felt the Nigerians would have reached the top of the podium.Nigeria lost 76-68 to Angola in Semi-Finals.

“We were leading by as much as 13 points, but they were able to come back,” he said.

Looking back at Madagascar, Obasohan said there is much to consider.

“Angola’s defeat against Senegal turned the tournament around,” he said.

“Had they not lost to Senegal, it could well have been an Angola-Nigeria Final.”

Angola lost to a very solid Tunisia team, though, one that fully deserved its gold medal.

“Tunisia played well,” Obasohan said.“They had a comfortable group and they were solid.”

Angola has dominated the African game for the past 20 years but people are wondering if that hegemony is now a thing of the past.

“I am not saying Angola is not going to win again,” Obasohan said.

“They have been dominant for so long.

“But if we look at their group of players, they are older now, and it may affect them.”

The former NBA player however believes Nigeria would have had a stronger squad had leading players ex-Lugano man Mike Efevberha, Lokomotiv Kuban guard Ben Uzoh and Spartak Primorye’s Deji Akindele been at the tournament.

The issue of insuring players was a thorn in the side of many national teams this summer, and Nigeria were not exempt.

When the NBA shut down its league operations on 1 July because of the lockout, federations had to pay more for players to insurance contracts of their star players.

Uzoh is 1.91m point guard who finished the last NBA season with the New Jersey Nets while Deji Akindele is a 2.16m center who had a brief spell with Golden State several years ago.

Efevberha wasn’t sure if he was going to be insured against injury, and Uzoh was out of contract.

“We missed two or three big guys who could have helped us a lot,” said Obasohan to FIBA.com.

“Insurance policies affected us a lot.

“With guys like Ben Uzoh or Deji Akindele – I am sure things could have been brighter for us.”

In addition to Angola and Nigeria, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, FYR of Macedonia, Greece, Lithuania, Russia, Jordan, Korea and New Zealand will be at the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament.

Hosts Great Britain, world champions Team USA, Tunisia, Spain, France, Argentina, Brazil, China and Australia already have spots in the tournament field in London.