Saturday
Zamalek Vs Cobra Sport
The Basketball Africa League (BAL) has unveiled the rosters of the six teams that will compete in the league’s Nile Conference group phase at the Hassan Moustafa Indoor Sports Complex in Cairo, Egypt, which tips off Saturday, April 9 and runs through Tuesday, April 19.
The six teams – BC Espoir Fukash (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Cape Town Tigers (South Africa), Cobra Sport (South Sudan), FAP (Cameroon), Petro de Luanda (Angola) and Zamalek (Egypt) – collectively feature 78 players from 12 countries across Africa and the U.S.
The first of 15 games take place in Cairo this month. The top four teams from the Nile Conference will join the top four teams from the Sahara Conference – REG (Rwanda), US Monastir (Tunisia), AS Salé (Morocco) and S.L.A.C (Guinea) – in the 2022 BAL Playoffs, which will be held in Kigali, Rwanda, from May 21-28.
The Nile Conference features two former NBA players: Jamel Artis (Cape Town Tigers; last played for the Orlando Magic) and Ike Diogu (Zamalek; last played for the San Antonio Spurs). Diogu, the ninth overall pick in the 2005 NBA Draft, won the 2015 FIBA AfroBasket championship as a member of the Nigeria Men’s National Team and was named the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the tournament in 2017.
Each of the Nile Conference’s six teams, which come from six African countries, will have up to 13 players, at least eight of whom are citizens of their respective team’s home country and up to four of whom are from other countries, with no more than two players per team from outside of Africa.
As part of the BAL Elevate program, each team’s 13th roster spot is reserved for a prospects from NBA Academy Africa, an elite basketball training center in Saly, Senegal, for the top high-school age prospects from across Africa and the first of its kind on the continent. Below are the six BAL Elevate players participating in the Nile Conference group phase:
BAL Elevate players:
Emmanuel Eberechukwu Okorafor (BC Espoir Fukash), Matar Diop (Cape Town Tigers), Khaman Madit Maluach (Cobra Sport), Ulrich Kamka Chomche (FAP), Thierry Serge Darlan (Petro de Luanda) and Khadim Rassoul Mboup (Zamalek).
The 12 BAL teams have been divided into two conferences – the Sahara Conference and the Nile Conference. Each conference plays a 15-game group phase during which each team faces the five other teams in its conference once. The Sahara Conference group phase took place at the Dakar Arena in Dakar, Senegal from March 5-15.