New Orleans Pelicans’ star, Jahlil Obika Okafor (born December 14, 1995 in Fort Smith, Arkansas, United States) appears to be on course for a place in Nigeria’s list to this year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, as feelers indicate that country’s national basketball team, D’Tigers’ new coach, Mike Brown has finalized moves to convince the lad to join the side.
Although he was born in God’s Own Country, Okafor is eligible to star for D’Tigers at Tokyo 2020 through his father’s Nigerian citizenship, despite the lanky lad earlier playing at youth level for America and already being touted for USA’s Olympic 2020 team.
The 24-year-old star’s father, Chukwudi, is of Igbo-American descent and his mother, Dacresha Lanett Benton, was African-American and white, but she had bronchitis and died two weeks later from a collapsed lung when he was nine years old.
Megasportsarena.com gathered that, as a youth, Okafor split time between his mother’s home in the town of Moffett, Oklahoma and his father’s home in Chicago, where he eventually permanently moved in to the South Side and then to Rosemont.
In November 2008, during seventh grade, he matched his father’s height of 6 feet 5 inches (1.96 m), and he could later attend Whitney Young High School when the family moved to Chicago’s North Side.
As a 6-foot-7-inch (2.01 m) eighth-grader, Okafor was recruited by DePaul Blue Demons men’s basketball in violation of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules when DePaul Athletic Director Jean Lenti Ponsetto made public comments about an offer.
Initially, interim coach Tracy Webster, made an oral offer on January 30, 2010 outside the DePaul locker room at Allstate Arena, but the offer was noted online by ESPNChicago.com and picked up by the press, leading to the problematic statements by Ponsetto.
He played high school basketball in Chicago, Illinois for Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, where he earned high school national player of the year awards from McDonald’s, USA Today and Parade.
At the 2012 FIBA Under-17 World Cup, he earned the Tournament MVP for the gold-medal winning USA team, and then led Whitney Young to the 2013 Chicago Public High School League (CPL) city championship, finishing as an All-American as a junior.
The following summer, he was an All-Tournament team selection at the 2013 FIBA U-19 World Cup, for the gold-medal Team USA and, the following his senior season, he earned broad All-American recognition and was named national player of the year.
He signed with Duke as a package with Tyus Jones, with widespread recognition as the pre-season Collegiate National Player of the Year, then went on to get USBWA National Freshman of the Year and ACC Player of the Year awards, as well as unanimous 2015 NCAA Men’s Basketball All-American first-team selection.
In the week following Duke’s victory in the final of the 2015 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament against Wisconsin, Okafor announced that he would enter the NBA draft and, on June 25, 2015, he was selected with the third overall pick by Philadelphia 76ers.
After debuting with a 20-point NBA Summer League performance on July 6, Okafor signed a two-year contract with The 76ers on July 7, with team options for two additional seasons, then made his debut on October 28 with a 26-point, 7-rebound, 2-block effort.
It was an epochal performance, in a game that also saw him get eight turnovers against Boston Celtics but, on December 7, 2017, Okafor was traded, along with Nik Stauskas and a 2019 second round draft pick, to Brooklyn Nets, in exchange for Trevor Booker.
His debut for The Nets came on his 22nd birthday, December 15, 2017 but he left less than a year later, August 9, 2018, as Okafor signed with New Orleans Pelicans, after which he posted a season-high 17 points in 13 minutes against Milwaukee Bucks on December 19.
On January 19, 2019, the Pelicans announced that Anthony Davis endured an index finger sprain that would sideline him 1–2 weeks, which gave Okafor increased playing time, and het went on to set sequential season-high totals on January 21 in 105–85 win over Memphis Grizzlies.
His season-high 20 points and season-high-tying 10 rebounds were followed by 24 points and 15 rebounds on January 26 in a 126–114 loss to San Antonio Spurs and January 29 with 27 points and 12 rebounds in a 121–116 win over Houston Rockets.
On January 23, 2020, Okafor posted a career-high six blocks in action against Detroit Pistons and he announced on January 28 that he would change his number from 8 to honor Kobe Bryant, but the next announcement Nigerians are expecting from him is a formal statement about his intent to play for D’Tigers at this year’s Olympics, come August in The Land of The Rising Sun.
Talk about Okafor’s impending allegiance to D’Tigers went viral on social media, with several posts appearing all through Tuesday indicating that it is just a matter of time before a formal declaration is made by Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF) about the exciting development.
One of the posts by @BballNaija disclosed: “According to sources, New Orleans Pelicans‘ Jahlil Okafor will play for Nigeria in the 2020 Summer Olympics. The Mike Brown effect?”
