Nigeria’s basketball national team, D’Tigers are bound to have an extra bolt of excitement and zest added to their next camp, as one their star players, Gabriel Nnamdi Vincent is stepping up into the main team at Miami Heat of America, megasportsarena.com reports.
Vincent is set to make the move into The Heat’s NBA mainframe after lining out for their back-up squad, with which the ace point guard excelled since signing the dotted lines early last year in Miami and now looks on course for a bigger impact with the main squad as this season goes by.
Nigerian slam-dunk lovers now have the huge chance of following and supporting another one of their players in USA’s National Basketball Association (NBA) league, following Vincent’s move on a two-year-contract to The Heat from Stockton Kings.
Fondly called ‘Gabe’ by friends, the new arrival, who was a member of D’Tigers’ historic squad to the 2019 FIBA World Cup in China and helped the Nigerian team qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, joins Nigerian-born rising star, Bam Adebayo in Miami.
He will now be seeking a step-up in the country where he played college basketball for UC Santa Barbara from 2014 to 2018, averaging 12.8 points in 113 games, and was named into the 2018 Second Team All- Big West after his senior season.
After graduating, ‘Gabe’ had a pre-draft workout with Sacramento Kings, but he eventually had to settle for an Exhibit 10 contract, after he was left out of the successful bid the 2018 NBA Draft and was waived a few days later.
On August 24 last year, Vincent, born June 14, 1996 in the US, but represented Nigeria at the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup in China, scored 23 points against Poland, including the game winning three pointer with 0.3 seconds left.
He played 24 games, with three starts, for The Kings during the 2018/19 season, averaging 8.8 points in 18.6 minutes per game, before moving on to Stockton, where he scored 35 points in two games for them in December 2019.
After signing the dotted lines for Miami in a two-way contract on January 8, Vincent has already appeared in four games with The Heat’s G League affiliate, but is now looking up to active days in the high-profile top-flight NBA.
A report by Vice City Alerts adds: “The Heat are calling up newly added 2-way player, Gabe Vincent, from the Skyforce (@IraHeatBeat). Vincent has been averaging 22.1 points per game while shooting 41.9% from 3.”
