The National Basketball Federation (FERWABA) has announced that American Joseph ‘Joby’ Wright will not be retained as the national technical director.

The former Miami heat head coach was signed on a 2-year contract that was supposed to run until the end of 2018.

"We evaluated his work since joining us in January and found that there was nothing tangible that he had done. He failed to achieve the agreed targets,” Richard Mutabazi, the Secretary General of the National Basketball Federation said.

Efforts to talk to Wright were futile as calls to his known mobile telephone went unanswered.  

Born in Savannah Georgia,  Wright is an American former college and professional basketballer, and men’s basketball head coach at Miami University and the University of Wyoming.

Wright was appointed as Rwanda technical director replacing Shema Maboko last in January.

He was tasked to contribute to the development of strategic national planning for youth development programmes at the grassroots level through schools, up to the senior national teams, for both the men and women’s teams.

His duties also included: marketing and promoting basketball, both locally and internationally; assisting in designing sponsorship proposals; enhancing men and women national leagues; strengthening basketball structure at the university level, creating of special programmes to increase the participation of girls and young women in basketball, and elevating coaching techniques and skills as well as designing a Coaches Certification Programme.

The local basketball federation still doesn’t have league sponsors despite the sport attracting crowds, especially the Friday night games.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw