Why Australia has two men’s basketball teams to cheer at the Paris Olympics

There are no indoor basketball courts in South Sudan. Not one. But on Sunday, the young nation will make its Olympic basketball debut against Puerto Rico in Lille. It is a remarkable story of resilience, unity and hope – with a strong Australian flavour.

South Sudan, in central Africa, declared independence from Sudan in 2011 following a protracted, bloody civil war. The world’s youngest country remains wracked by internal turmoil. But when retired British-South Sudanese basketball star Luol Deng received a phone call from his brother in 2019, it came with an intriguing offer. The government of South Sudan wanted someone to run its nascent basketball program; would Deng help?

Related: Is US men’s basketball’s era of Olympic domination coming to an end?

In the years since, the former NBA player – who left what is now South Sudan as a refugee aged just five – has thrown himself into building an African basketball powerhouse. At first, he had no players, no courts, no coach and had to pay himself. But Deng had a vision: uniting his new country through basketball.

“Since I was born, I have known nothing but conversations about war,” Deng, who spent over a decade in the NBA, recently told the BBC. “Whenever I was in school, even when I was in the NBA, it was always ‘refugees left because of war’ and ‘war-torn country’. Now we are finding a new story.”

Paying his own salary, Deng got to work. He called in favours, recruited a coach (also initially unpaid) and began speaking to potential players. The exodus of South Sudanese refugees during the decades of violence meant that there were talented basketballers playing around the world, but most with a second nationality. Deng had to persuade them to take a chance on his vision.

That is when the Australian flavour emerged. In Paris, South Sudan are very much a second team for Australian fans to cheer on. Four members of the 12-man squad play in Australia’s National Basketball League – Bul Kuol, Jackson Makoi, Majok Deng and Sunday Dech – while a fifth, Kuany Kuany, lived in Australia before relocating to the United States for college. Another Australian, Thon Maker, had a last-minute eligibility appeal rejected after the former Boomers player switched basketball allegiances. Other members of the team play in the NBA, Serbia, China, Israel and Rwanda.

One player to be contacted by Deng’s coaching staff was emerging NBL prospect Kuol, who had been on the cusp of a call-up to an Australian national team camp. When the question arrived, via a direct message on Instagram, Kuol did not think twice. “As soon as I saw the message it was a no-brainer,” he told Guardian Australia last year. “Of course – it would be my pleasure, my honour to do something like that.”

For Kuol and many of his teammates, the opportunity to give back to a homeland some had not set foot in for decades was too good to turn down (Kuol grew up in the Kakuma refugee camp, in north-west Kenya, before moving to Australia aged nine).

“Australia is home, my adopted home,” he said. “It is part of who I am – a place that I’ve grown up, a place that I’ve learned, a place that I found opportunity, a place to call home. But South Sudan is who I am, where my parents are from, my heritage, my history.”

Having drawn together a team from across the world, Deng’s program began to flourish. South Sudan qualified for their first Fiba World Cup last year. By beating 11-time African champions Angola at the World Cup, the South Sudanese booked a ticket to Paris. The team arrive at the Paris Olympics as the lowest-ranking team to qualify for the Games in two decades, but that meant nothing to the people of the capital, Juba, who came out in force to celebrate when members of the team visited following the World Cup.

“It’s provided a nation with pride, with unity,” Sydney Kings shooting guard/small forward Kuol, who missed the World Cup after an injury on the eve of the tournament but was picked for Paris, said last year. “It’s brought people together despite the differences, despite the conflict.”

Related: Bullish Boomers have a mix of new and old to defy Olympics ‘group of death’ | Kieran Pender

The team start the tournament on a high, after almost upsetting defending champions the United States in a warm-up match; the Americans were forced to overcome a double-digit deficit to secure a one-point win. But despite coming within an inch of a seismic upset, coach Royal Ivey insisted afterward there were “no moral victories”. The nations will meet again next week in Group C, before South Sudan conclude the pool with a clash against Serbia.

In the lead up to Paris, the South Sudanese national team held a training camp in nearby Rwanda, unable to train at home given the lack of infrastructure. But the head coach, Deng, is currently overseeing the construction of an indoor facility in Juba. In time, he hopes to build nine courts. This may be South Sudan’s first appearance at the Olympic basketball competition, but it seems unlikely to be the last. “It’s just the beginning,” Deng said recently.