By Jacob Mawela.
An initial exposure to basketball was when I used to view an animated series starring the Harlem Globetrotters on a small black-&-white television screen, during primary school days – aeons before I photographed the real team – not once, but twice!
Back in pre-1994 South Africa, neither did I know I’d later cross paths with a surfeit of the sport’s megastars. In December 16, 1996, my first rendezvous was with Earvin “Magic” Johnson when he descended on the Elkah basketball courts in Soweto with fellow American players for a clinic at which they demonstrated basics of the game to youngsters – with the superstar also addressing attendees regarding his living with HIV.
Next followed Julius Erving II – whom I met in late November 2000, at Pecanwood Golf Estate during the Nelson Mandela Invitational Challenge in which he golfed against the Namibian sprinter, Frankie Fredericks, F1 driver, Nigel Mansell and a phalanx of other global sporting stars! The father of former WTA player, Alexandra Stevenson – Erving has also been honoured with a statue in Philadelphia, a city in which he once played for the Philadelphia 76ers. A snap from that time depicts myself, Erving and Gary Player, posing jovially.
Ten years later in June 29, 2010, I came tete-a-tete with America’s then joint most popular sportsman, namely, Kobe Bryant (whose plethora of achievements include an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film) at a Sandton gala event where the now late shooting guard was the centre of attraction!
September 2, 2012 at King Edward VII School at Houghton Estate, had me meeting Thabo Sefolosha, the son of the South African musical band Malopoets’ percussionist, Patrick and Swiss artist, Christine Beck, pending an NBA outreach programme named Basketball Without Borders. Sefolosha – whom I used to watch playing for the Oklahoma City Thunder on ESPN – partook alongside African players such as Dikembe Mutombo, Luc Mbah A Moute and Luol Deng.
On July 30, 2015, I documented the same roster of players – including WNBA players such as Mozambique’s Clarisse Machanguana – at the Protea Glen Boys & Girls Club whilst they conducted a clinic for Soweto’s youngsters in the presence of the NBA’s Commissioner, Adam Silver.
August 2, 2018 found myself walking alongside Kareem-Abdul Jabbar to a building site at Lawley where NBA players assembled to assist in the building of houses under a Habitats for Humanity initiative. Monitoring Jabbar and Cameroon player Joel Embiid painting one of the newly-built houses, some bricklayers quipped that the duo didn’t require any stepladders – in reference to their imposing heights!
During a cocktail party in Rosebank hosted for the basketballers later that day – I conversed with former New York Knicks star Carmelo Anthony, who, whilst we were out at Lawley, was simultaneously revamping the Jabavu basketball courts in Soweto courtesy of his Foundation.
Came the NBA Africa Game on August 4, 2018 at Menlyn, I was photographing the Congolese giant, Dikembe Mutombo court side. One of 10 children, ‘it was my second encounter with the 8-time NBA All-Star.