Catch Me on Defence

Some hoopers were handed the game by an older cousin. Some found it on a school court. Nelson found it on a screen.

“I started playing ball because of an anime back in secondary school, and learnt how to play out of the obsession to that anime.”

Obsession is his word, and it is the right one. There is a generation of hoopers in this country whose first coach was a screen, a cartoon or a highlight reel or a game watched at 2am, and who then had to go and find out, alone, on a real court, whether the thing was as good as it looked. That is a harder way in than it sounds. Nobody shows you the footwork. You watch a move, you go outside, you try it until it works. Nelson did that until it did. He is 6’3", 105 kilos, twenty-five, from Anambra, and the obsession that started in secondary school has carried him all the way to a bracket.

The passer’s problem

Then there is how he plays.

“I play to win no matter the position you put me in. I love to assist, which is why I love Chris Paul.”

A passer. The thing Nelson loves most about basketball is giving the ball to somebody else at exactly the right moment. His hero is the point guard whose entire career was an argument that the smartest player on the floor wins, not the biggest. He wears number 3, as Chris Paul did. Make of that what you will.

Now put that man in a 1v1. There is no one to assist. The pass, the thing he loves, is simply not available. Every possession is his or nobody’s. For a scorer that is heaven. For a passer it is a problem, and the first half of his sentence is the answer to it. No matter the position you put me in. He is not asking for the format that suits him. He is saying he will win in the one you gave him.

There is a tell in that, too. Players who love to assist tend to be players who see the floor a half-second before everyone else, who read a defender’s hips, who know where the help is coming from before it comes. In one-on-one that reading does not go away. It just points at a different target.

And when the night ends with a 3v3, the ball will finally have somewhere to go. That is where the assists live. That is where the Chris Paul in him gets a floor.

But the assist is not where he plants his flag. For a man who loves giving the ball away, his signature line is about taking it.

“All I say is catch me on defence.”

6’3". 105kg. Twenty-five. Anambra. Number 3.