Last month, 21-year-old Kavita Akula made spectacular news by becoming the first Indian basketball player to win a full NCAA Division 1 scholarship, at the Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona. Now, as she prepares for her summer role as a star point guard for India at the 2017 FIBA Asia Women's Cup, Akula joins the Hoopdarshan podcast to talk about her scholarship, her improvements from IMG Academy to college ball in the USA, and India's chances at the Asia Cup in Bengaluru next month.
In addition, co-hosts Kaushik Lakshman and Karan Madhok also review the NBA Finals, Kevin Durant's upcoming visit to India, and India's Men's squad at the 2017 BRICS Games.
Hoopdarshan is the truest voice of Indian basketball, and since we're such hopeless fans of the game, it will become the voice of everything basketball related we love, from the NBA to international hoops, too. On every episode of Hoopdarshan, we will be inviting a special guest to interview or chat to about a variety of topics. With expert insight from some of the brightest and most-involved people in the world of Indian basketball, we hope to bring this conversation to a many more interested fans, players, and followers of the game.
Seven years ago, the IMG Academy in Florida selected eight Indian teenagers on scholarship to be trained in basketball and educated in the United States. The youngsters developed in different ways and some found more success than others. The biggest name in the group turned out to be Satnam Singh, a seven-footer from Punjab, who in 2015 bypassed college to become the first Indian player to be drafted to the NBA.
But while Satnam hogged the limelight, another star from the original group of eight has blossomed from the shadows.
Talented guard Kavita Akula - from Bhilai, Chhattisgarh - has made history by becoming the first Indian-born female basketball player to receive a full scholarship from a Division 1 college in the United States, the Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona. After making a name for herself in two years of junior college at the Garden City Community College (GCCC) in Kansas, this is a major step forward for the 21-year-old.
Akula signed a letter of intent with Grand Canyon on Monday and will be joining them in September this year. ESPN reported that Akula will major in business management and marketing.
Akula had two offers on her plate -- one from Grand Canyon in Phoenix, Arizona and another from Saint Francis University in Pennsylvania -- but she decided to sign with Grand Canyon because of their new head coach, Nicole Powell, who is a former WNBA All-Star. "Coach Powell has great energy and she is looking for somebody who can lead the team, and I thought I will fit in well," Akula said. "Coach said my experience playing junior college will help the team."
Before she begins her new journey, however, Akula's attentions will be diverted back home. Over the next few months, she will be practicing with India's national women's team as the prepare for the prestigious FIBA Asia Women's Cup, set to be held on home soil in Bengaluru in July. Akula was last part of Team India at the 2015 FIBA Asia Championship where she couldn't break into the rotation. With her game seeing rapid improvements over the last couple of years, she will be expected to play a much bigger role this time around.
At GCCC, Akula led the team in three-pointers in both her freshman and sophomore campaigns, falling five treys short of the school’s career record, set by Marci Johnson from 1999 to 2001. She was a rising star in Chhattisgarh before being picked for the IMG Academy and has played for India at the junior levels in the past. You can read more of her fascinating basketball journey in this older article by Aishwarya Kumar for ESPN.
Satnam Singh's legacy in the Indian Basketball Hall of Fame is secure. The first Indian player to be drafted into the NBA, Satnam was picked 52nd by the Dallas Mavericks last year and played last season with their D-League affiliate, the Texas Legends.
Now, with an assist back home, Satnam is hoping to make a more direct contribution to the rise of basketball in India.
Earlier this week, Satnam Singh announced that he has signed an alliance with Universal Basketball Alliance University (UBAU) and Elite University Sports Alliance of India (EUSAI) "to aid and enhance the advancement and infiltration of basketball throughout India". UBAU has been organising the All India Inter-Zonal Mens Basketball University Tournament for the last few years and has helped it gain in visibility through TV broadcasts and greater national news coverage. Satnam's role will be to help promote UBAU's national tournament. Going forward, the tournament's Most Valuable Player trophy will be known as "The Satnam Singh MVP Award".
The tournament, known as Indian Insanity, attempts to parallel the USA's March Madness. In addition, it is a rung in the ladder for players to move on to the affiliated UBA basketball league in India.
Ironically, for all his achievements, Satnam didn't attend college himself. He was recruited at 14 by the IMG Academy in Florida, where he played High School basketball, but could not meet the academic expectations to get a college scholarship in the United States. Instead, he declared for the NBA Draft at 19 and was picked by Dallas.
One of India's top institutions for basketball talent and results, the Jeppiaar Institute of Technology (JIT), is now striving to help its top players get even better. JIT, which is based in Sri Perumbadur just outside Chennai in Tamil Nadu, is sending four of its best players and their head coach to the world-famous IMG Academy facility in Brandenton, Florida, USA for a five-week training camp from June 17 to July 23.
The four JIT athletes (all from Tamil Nadu) and coach will be hosted at the IMG campus. JIT's Managing Director N Marie Wilson will join the contingent to Florida.
The IMG Acdemy is famous for having an incredibly varied and holistic programme for a range of sports. Most importantly for India, this is the same academy that trained and educated Satnam Singh for five years, the big man who became India's first player drafted into the NBA last year. Its basketball programme has produced Jimmy Butler (Chicago Bulls) and Michael Beasley (Houston Rockets), among other professional athletes.
The partnership between JIT and IMG was facilitated by Pursuit India, the talent management division of Ekalavyas Consultancy. To help improve JIT's (already dominant) performances at basketball events and championships in India, JIT's MD Wilson worked with Pursuit's Vishnu Ravi Shankar to help land JIT players to the summer basketball camp at IMG.
The IMG experience for these players from JIT will be invaluable in teaching them to be more compatible with a different and more strenuous brand of basketball. The technical experts of IMG, with their case-to-case evaluation of players might also be able to offer more of an insight than other coaches in India who might not have the same equipment or time to do so.
"The objective is to develop skill sets that will allow the players to compete at the Inter-University and Inter-College levels," Wilson said. He hoped that this turns out to be a pioneering decision, which will be replicated in the future, while also stressing that he would like to prepare the players to play in professional leagues should such opportunities present themselves.
Pursuit's Shankar added, "It’s a great step forward by Mr. Wilson and the management at Jeppiaar. Even five weeks at an academy like IMG can do a world of good for young players and help them become future stars." He also said that he hopes that other universities will be able to identify this as an opportunity and will opt for it going forward.
JIT contingent for IMG Academy's Summer Basketball Camp
Anantharaj Eswaran (19)
Jeyavenkatesh Kothandaraja (20)
Navas Jaleel (17)
Muin Bek Hafeez (20)
Coach: Ravishankar
Muin Bek Hafeez, one of the players making the trip shared his excitement, "My teammates and I are excited about learning from players and coaches who have experience in the NBA and I hope that this will help me in my career going forward."
For five years, Satnam Singh lived his life between two environmental and cultural extremities of home and school. Home, for Satnam, was the tiny village of Ballo Ke in Punjab’s farming hinterlands, a nondescript Indian village of less than a thousand people, where his family lived and farmed. School was the state-of-the-art facilities of the IMG Basketball Academy in Bradenton, Florida—thousands of miles away, in the United States.
In aesthetic, development, comfort, culture, and language, Ballo Ke and Bradenton couldn’t be further apart. And yet, somehow, India’s biggest basketball hope—a 7-2 giant with the expectations of turning the world’s second-largest population into the sport’s next lucrative market—handled the extremes with surprising aplomb. He was recruited by IMG at 14, whisked away from Punjab to Florida, honed and perfected his game in a completely new environment, and returned home regularly to pay homage to the land that birthed him.
Each trip back from the US, Satnam traveled through India’s capital, stopping by in New Delhi for a short stay before taking a challenging trip back to his village. Despite his rising status among India’s small (and mostly ignored) basketball fraternity, he was mostly anonymous in India off the court. Or, as anonymous as a 7-footer could possibly be in a land where he stands a foot-and-some taller than the average male.
But a couple of weeks ago, in his most recent trip home, everything was different for the now 19-year-old. Satnam was greeted by dozens with banners, marigold garlands, flashing cameras, friendly handshakes, and celebration to rival the scenes of a Punjabi wedding. For the next two weeks, he was welcomed by an entourage of fans and well-wishers everywhere he went. He dominated the sports pages of India’s mainstream newspapers—the same papers which have largely ignored basketball for decades—every day. He filmed news-channel documentaries, made coaching and speaking appearances, and was shadowed closely by cameras even when he prayed. No Indian citizen whose primary profession as to dribble a basketball had ever experienced celebrity like this before.
Satnam had broken a barrier that none of his countrymen—in India’s long basketball history—had ever penetrated. He’d become the first Indian citizen to be drafted into the NBA.
The NBA Draft is the culmination of years of toil and dreams, and the birth of a whole new era, for dozens of young and talented basketball players. For the average basketball fan, though, most players picked outside the lottery or the later stages of the first round are just names to fill out blank spaces. Only a small percentage of those names ever make an NBA appearance, and an even smaller percentage leave enough of a mark to be truly remembered.
As usual, the big names in the top 10, and the “steals” and role players were picked up later in the first round. Hours after the Minnesota Timberwolves made Karl-Anthony Towns the number-one pick of the night, the Dallas Mavericks selected Satnam Singh with the No. 52 pick of the 2015 Draft, sandwiched between Tyler Harvey of the Magic at 51 and Sir’Dominic Pointer to the Cavaliers at 53. After a soft cheer from what was left of the crowd gathered at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the 2015 Draft concluded without further notable interruption. In reality, most fans had checked out by the time the first round concluded.
But No. 52 (like the jersey number he donned during Summer League) was more than just a name to fill up a blank space. Just like they had done with Wang Zhi Zhi and China 16 years earlier, the Mavericks made history for a billion-strong population with their second round pick.
Hugs. A draft hat. A handshake with the deputy commissioner. A life transformed.
Despite the pick, few around the league and in the Mavericks camp were truly expecting the big kid to be NBA-ready anytime in the near future. Mavericks owner Mark Cuban made it clear early that Satnam would be heading to the Mavs’ D-League affiliate Texas Legends (now coached by former NBA guard Nick Van Exel) and would be, in NBA terms, a “project.”
“The Summer League was pretty good because I had never before played that level,” Satnam told SLAM over the phone soon after Summer League ended. “It was my first time there, and it was a good experience. I learned about the speed of the game, how much faster it is, and about my own speed and movement in the time I got to play. I think my coaches were happy with my progress, especially since I was coming straight from school to there, without college. IMG Academy is [high] school level and this was much different. This felt more professional, like being at a job.”
Back home, however, even those baby steps were being celebrated as giant leaps.
In early August, Satnam returned to India for the first time after being drafted. His fortnight back in the homeland was jam-packed with events and media appearances. Satnam toured the Golden Temple in Amritsar with his family and former coaches, taking a moment to pray at the Sikh holy shrine. He spent time in his village, briefly turning the quiet little hamlet abuzz with national media interest and attention. He returned to the Guru Nanak Stadium in Ludhiana, the court where he first honed his game as a pre-adolescent. He reconnected with his boyhood idol in Indian basketball (Jagdeep Singh Bains) and paid respect to the family of the late Dr. Subramanian, one of India’s most respected basketball coaches who taught the game to Satnam and dozens of other national team players. Satnam trained young players in Ludhiana, travelled to the state of Rajasthan to interact with students in Jaipur, and received felicitations and accolades everywhere he went.
“People in India can learn from my example if I do better for myself and go further in my career,” Satnam said. “I want to show young players that I got this far by focusing on nothing but the game. I’ve been drafted in the NBA and I want to play in the NBA. I hope that more Indian players can follow me here. But if you want to become like me, follow the hard work I did. Hard work, every day. Even if there is a move you’re good at, keep trying it multiple times. Make it perfect. Keep working on your game. Don’t focus on anyone or anything else.”
Soon before his triumphant return to India, Satnam reflected at how much life had changed for him between the ages of 14 and 19, when he went from being a scholarship student at IMG to India’s first NBA draftee.
“Back then, I had only thought that I will play hard and see where it goes,” he said. “Now, I’m feeling good to have come this far. It’s good, but it’s not great—because I won’t rest until I play my first NBA game. I won’t be happy until my first game. When I see a full stadium of fans, and feel the support of Indian fans, that is when I’ll feel truly happy.”
In 2011, months before his 16th birthday, Satnam already made his senior team debut for India and played bit minutes in the FIBA Asia Championship that year in China. For the next two years, while most of his classmates in school enjoyed family and downtime during the holiday seasons, Satnam returned to India to play for the national team and in domestic championships.
Now, while he tries to chase his NBA dream, Satnam has made it clear that he won’t be donning India’s national basketball team colors anytime soon, specifically at the 2015 FIBA Asia Championship set to tip off back in China the last week of September.
“This year, I will not play for India at the FIBA Asia Championship,” he told SLAM. “When the FIBA tournament happens, I will have to be back here, in the US, for practice and for training camps. Hopefully, I will get a chance to play for India when there is no clash in the schedule between the international tournaments and my engagements in the US. I have no plans to go to play for India until I’m established professionally.”
For now, his focus is completely on using the D-League stage to take the next leap higher, where he hopes to follow in the footsteps of 7-5 Canadian giant Sim Bhullar. Last season, Bhullar slowly gained his footing for the Reno Bighorns of the NBDL to eventually get a call-up by the Sacramento Kings and become the first player of Indian-origin to play an NBA game.
“What I’ve been told by my coaches is simple,” Satnam said. “The better I get, the more opportunities I will get to play. They have said that I could win a 10-day contract by the Mavericks if I play well enough in the D-League, and then 10 more days if I get better and so on and so on. I was informed by the other coaches there about the D-League and my future after the D-League. The better I play there, the higher up I’ll go.
“I can definitely be ready to make the jump the NBA soon,” he added. “I know I can do better, at least improve my game by 50 percent when I’m in the D-League. Many of the players in the D-League are en route to the NBA or have already played there—playing and practicing among them will improve me a lot. This is a big chance for me. I will feel good when I go up against other seven-footers in the D-League.”
However his journey proceeds, Satnam has already achieved the impossible. The boy from a non-descript Punjabi village has come further than the distance between Ballo Ke and Dallas and jumped higher than his own gargantuan height. On Draft night, he may have been a relatively unknown giant in a sharp suit; but once he was drafted, his name rung out across fans in India, and eventually, fans around the world, too.
“My hope is to play basketball for long, and play in the NBA a long time,” he said, “I want to help improve things in India, too. When I’m done with playing basketball, I want to go back to India and find other players and help them, too. I want to go help and teach everyone in India.”
Satnam Singh at the 65th Senior National Basketball
Basketball Championship 2014, in Bhilwara. Photo
Courtesy: Ekalavyas - Vishnu Ravi Shankar
The Present.
Dressed in a dapper, dark blue single-breasted suit, Satnam Singh Bhamara sat anxiously on the crowded floor of the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, New York. A single Thursday evening in late June had the potential to change the 19-year-old’s life forever, and forever make history for Indian Basketball and the NBA.
But nothing was certain. The previous few weeks had turned Satnam from an unknown 7-footer out of High School into a possible late Second-Round pick. His name had made its way on to the draft boards, but being a potential late Second-Round pick is too close to being undrafted, too close to a dream deferred. The NBA Draft has only 60 picks, which means only 60 dreams are guaranteed to come true on that night. And as the picks went on, and the teams who had worked out Satnam with chose other players, that number edged closer and closer to 60.
And then, after pick number 52 was announced, nothing was the same again.
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The Past.
Dressed in a plain, striped white shirt and blue jeans, Satnam Singh Bhamara sat anxiously at the former office of the Basketball Federation of India (BFI) near Paharganj in New Delhi. A single basketball workout a few weeks ago had changed the 14-year-old’s life forever, and set into motion a new era for Indian Basketball.
But still, there was uncertainty. That day in the BFI office – in the summer of 2010 – was the first time I got to meet and get to know Satnam. Just a month before that meeting, Satnam was one among 50 boys and girls – all under 14 from every corner of India – who were invited to New Delhi by the BFI for trials hosted for IMG Reliance for a potential IMG Academy scholarship programme. The youngsters were chosen based on their performances at the recent Sub-Junior National Basketball championship.
Satnam was the centrepiece – literally and figuratively – of those trials. While the rest of the players were 13 or younger, a special exception was made for the 14-year-old 7-footer who was played for Punjab’s Youth (U16) team already and had recently led them to a national championship in Trichy, Tamil Nadu. A year earlier, at just 13, he had already played for India at the FIBA Asia U16 Championship in Malaysia.
IMG-Reliance had recently signed a sponsorship deal with the BFI to sponsor the federation events and provide this rare scholarship programme. After the tryouts, IMG’s coach Dan Barto chose four boys and four girls for the scholarship at his basketball academy back in Florida, USA. Unsurprisingly, Satnam was the biggest name among the eight.
So there he was at the BFI office in New Delhi, a few months before his semester of school was due to begin in Bradenton with the IMG Academy. He sat nervously in the office – barely being able to stretch his large legs on a bench in the tiny space – and waited for his paperwork to get cleared. He spoke only in thick Punjabi and needed by help to fill out his English visa form for the United States.
He had been handed a scholarship at one of the top youth sport academies in the world, but back then, he didn’t really know what it meant. In my earlier conversations, he talked with uncertainty about the future. Uncertainty about how he, a boy who grew up in a farming village with less than 700 people and trained at the squalor of the Ludhiana Basketball Academy in Punjab, a boy who was barely familiar with urban India, would now be exposed to a First World nation, exposed to some of the world’s best training facilities, and a culture at a polar opposite to his own. He didn’t know that the way he was educated and coached would change forever.
He had heard whispers – said wistfully rather than confidently – that he had the potential of becoming the first NBA player out of India. He told me that his dream was indeed to play in the NBA one day. His potential had been co-signed early by Troy Justice, the NBA’s Director of Basketball Operations in India back then. Here he was, a boy who played for Punjab’s youth teams and was being forced to pay his dues as a backup over less-talented seniors in the national team being told that he could do what no Indian had done in 60 or 70 years of history of both the NBA and Indian Basketball.
He was anxious about his visa process, sure, as every Indian applying for US visa ever is. But he was calmly confident about his chances with the NBA ‘one day’. No one knew when, of if, that ‘one day’ would ever come. Maybe the confidence was a virtue of his ignorance, of him not yet being aware of the low odds of making the world’s best basketball league, of the combination of hard work, opportunity, and luck that goes into making that dream a reality.
He got that visa, and along with seven other Indian basketball-playing kids, headed off to Florida. And nothing was the same again.
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Aside from providing basketball fans with the greatest basketball players, teams, and moments in history, the NBA has also been at the forefront of social change and bringing the world closer through the sport. They featured the league’s first black player (Earl Lloyd) in 1950, drafted the first European players (Fernando Martin and Georgi Glouchkov) in 1985, brought in first Chinese player (Wang Zhi Zhi) in 1999, their first openly gay player (Jason Collins) in 2014, and of course, the first Indian-descent player (Sim Bhullar) earlier this year.
The seven-footed center Wang Zhi Zhi – the first Chinese player in the NBA – was drafted 36th by the Dallas Mavericks in 1999. 16 years later, it was these same Mavericks who were on the clock at the 2015 NBA draft with their second round pick – number 52 – and an Indian seven-footer waiting in the wings to become a part of history.
China always had a long history with basketball and success with the sport in Asia, but the game only became the nation’s favourite as the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) was launched in the mid-90s and Wang’s drafting was followed by Yao Ming going number one to the Houston Rockets in 2002. Yao’s short but successful career thrust the spotlight on China’s billion-plus as they became the largest basketball market on Earth.
The NBA have been wishing for India – another billion-strong nation – to mirror that success, too. Of course, our nation has different complications. Over here, most other sports including basketball exist under cricket’s ever-dominating shadow. The NBA put in their efforts over the last half decade to have a bigger grassroots presence in India, bring NBA superstars closer to fans in the country, and accelerate the availability and broadcast of NBA content to Indians. The NBA had come to India, all that was left was for an Indian to go to the NBA.
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Satnam Singh Bhamara – at 14 – came to America a complete stranger to the country’s culture, language, and educational system. He struggled in class and missed his family back in Punjab. But it helped to have the other prospects from India – his friends Sanjeev Kumar, Dinesh Mishra, and Ashiv Jain – with face the early cultural experiences together.
It also helped to have basketball. Satnam improved his game with the coaches at IMG, specifically Coach Barto who had scouted him in India and eventually, Coach Kenny Natt – the former coach of the Sacramento Kings – who had also been the former coach of India’s national squad and had given Satnam his first senior international appearance for India. In 2012, Natt joined the IMG Academy staff as well, and his familiarity with the big Punjabi kid added another positive dimension to the training process.
On court at the academy, Satnam spent the next five years with focus on improving his strength and conditioning as a priority, and eventually making his mark for IMG’s senior team. Back home in India, he continued to return for some domestic championships, playing well for Punjab whenever he got a chance. After Natt gave him the senior debut at the FIBA Asia Championship in 2011, he played for India’s senior national team for a couple of more Asian tournaments. At the FIBA Asia Under-16 tournaments in Vietnam, he made waves by emerging as one of the top youth talents in the continent.
Off court, he improved his English and eventually, began to see a realistic roadmap for his future. As he reached college eligibility, several mid and high level NCAA colleges showed him interest, but his English wasn’t good enough to get him the grades required. So he took a bold risk and declared for the NBA draft. Over the next few weeks, he impressed scouts in pre-draft workouts around the league, and, with confidence in his abilities, he waited for Draft Day.
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Karl Anthony-Towns went first to Minnesota, D’Angelo Russell went second to the Lakers. Several hours later, NBA Commissioner announced the last pick of the First Round – Kevin Looney – going 30th to the champion Golden State Warriors.
A few minutes later, deputy commissioner Mark Tatum took over to welcome in the picks for the Second Round. Turkey’s Cedi Osman was at 31. Josh Richardson went 40th. And as more time passed and the night got older, the numbers inched closer to the end. The Orlando Magic picked Tyler Harvey at 51. With less than 10 more picks to be drafted, it was going to be now or never for Satnam.
Hugs. A draft hat. A handshake with the deputy commissioner. A life transformed.
On draft night, Satnam went from being an unknown international prospect to a player drafted into the NBA within a matter of minutes. But those few minutes were only the crowning glory of the culmination of years of hard work, fortunate opportunities, support from friends, family, and coaches, and many anxious waits.
Those few minutes signified a dream realized, the end of a journey that few in Indian basketball ever saw possible.
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Or, they signify the beginning of another journey.
Getting drafted into the NBA and playing in the NBA are two vastly and widely different achievements. Once he signs his first NBA contract, Satnam will be hoping to be named in the Mavericks’ Summer League and earn some minutes in Las Vegas. It is highly likely that he’ll start the regular season in Frisco instead of Dallas, playing for the Mavericks’ affiliate D-League team Texas Legends. Here, he’ll have the opportunity to learn the pace of the professional game, become more confident against better opponents, and further develop physically and technically as a player.
Blessed with his gargantuan 7-foot-2 frame, Satnam has age and size on his side. In the long-term, the best-case scenario for him – if the Mavericks are able to get the most of his potential – would be to eventually secure a steady backup NBA job for several years. Those invested in Indian basketball will be desperately wishing for Satnam to make the leap into earning NBA playing time. Even his smallest steps will leave giant footprints. For a country so anxious for basketball role models, any success for Satnam – no matter how miniscule – will be a positive and influential step forward.
However his journey proceeds, Satnam has already achieved the impossible. The boy from a non-descript Punjabi village has come further than the distance between Ballo Ke and Dallas and jumped higher than his own gargantuan height. On Draft Night, he may have been a relatively unknown giant in a sharp suit; but once he was drafted, his name rung viral across fans in India, and eventually, fans around the world, too.
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The future?
Dressed in a Royal Blue Mavericks jersey with the name ‘Satnam’ in silver on the back, Satnam Singh Bhamara waits on the bench for his number to be called. With a couple of minutes left in the first quarter, Coach Rick Carlisle looks to the end of the bench and nods at him. Satnam jumps up on his feet, checks in at the scorer’s table, and exchanges dabs with the exiting player on court.
He steps on an NBA court and nothing is ever the same again.
Satnam Singh Bhamara made history by becoming the first Indian player to be drafted into the NBA. That was Step 1. What happens now? On Episode 10 of the Indian basketball podcast Hoopdarshan, hosts Kaushik Lakshman and Karan Madhok catch up with ESPN contributor and accomplished novelist Mark Winegardner, who has closely followed Satnam's journey from Ballo Ke Village to the IMG Academy to the NBA Draft for the past four years. Mark recalls his experiences visiting Satnam in his village in Punjab, helps us predict Satnam's future in the NBA, and we discuss what this achievement means for India and the NBA.
Listen in to also hear about our draft night reactions and Satnam's incredible journey to becoming an NBA draftee. Karan and Kaushik also discuss the rest of the NBA Draft as well as the upcoming SABA Qualifiers for India's national men's team in Bengaluru.
Winegardner is an American journalist and novelist based in Florida. He is a contributing writer for ESPN The Mag, a professor at Florida State University, and the author of books like Crooked River Burning, The Godfather Returns, The Godfather's revenge, etc. He visited India and the village of Ballo Ke to write a 2012 story on Satnam Singh Bhamara's roots and his hopes to become the first India in the NBA for ESPN: NEXT magazine.
Hoopdarshan aims to be the true voice of Indian basketball, and since we're such hopeless fans of the game, it will become the voice of everything basketball related we love, from the NBA to international hoops, too. On every episode of Hoopdarshan, we will be inviting a special guest to interview or chat to about a variety of topics. With expert insight from some of the brightest and most-involved people in the world of Indian basketball, we hope to bring this conversation to a many more interested fans, players, and followers of the game.
I love basketball and I love writing about basketball. In my work, there has usually been two different content paths that I have pursued: Indian Basketball and the NBA. Go down the list of my blog posts or my articles for other publications and you will see news, features, and analysis for these two subject matters, which, despite both being about the same sport, have been mutually exclusive.
From today onwards, that mutual exclusivity is going to change forever.
With the 52nd pick of the 2015 NBA Draft, the Dallas Mavericks selected Satnam Singh on India. And with that one quick swoop, a shake-hand with the NBA's Deputy Commissioner, and a Mavericks hat over his giant head, history was made. Satnam Singh Bhamara, the 19-year-old, 7-foot-2 Indian from Punjab who has been honing his game at the IMG Basketball Academy in Florida for the past five years, became the first Indian citizen to be drafted into the NBA. A dream that started in tiny Punjabi village has ended up on the podium at the Barclay's Center in Brooklyn. Satnam has achieved what no Indian in the country's 70-year basketball history achieved before: make it to the NBA.
Satnam surprised many people by declaring for the NBA Draft after he couldn't secure a college scholarship, but he has backed up his decision with hard work and impressive performances at the pre-draft workouts. The Dallas Mavericks were one of the seven teams to host Satnam and it now seems that he convinced them of his potential enough for them to pick him late in the second round.
Satnam has a long way to go, of course. He is nowhere close to being ready for big-time NBA action, or even be ready to crack the Mavericks' top 15 roster. But being drafted has given him some security for his near future and puts him in a good position in Dallas to improve and become a better player. It is likely that the Mavericks will stash him into the D-League for a year or two and see how he develops. The Mavericks' D-League team is the Texas Legends, whose former assistant coach Scott Flemming was also the coach of India's Senior National Men's team.
This is also not a time for Indian basketball to rest on its laurels. Apart from his pre-teens where he dominated in junior tournaments in India for Punjab, the majority of Satnam's development has come thanks to the coaches at the IMG Academy, where he has been since he was 14-years-old. Satnam returned to India regularly to play in domestic national tournaments as well as represent the national squad in international championships, but these trips were more of a hindrance than a benefit. Sure, Satnam gained some experience playing in his country's colours, but the negative attitudes of many domestic coaches and selectors in India, and a threat of injury, kept him away, and he (rightly) focused his efforts completely into training for the NBA. Satnam has broken a major barrier, but Indian Basketball still has a long way to go.
I have written a lot about Satnam in the past, and over the next few days, weeks, months, and (hopefully) years, I will be writing a lot more about him. But for now, let's celebrate the day that an Indian basketball player got drafted into the NBA, become a worldwide trending topic, broke an international barrier for the NBA, and reawakened fans in India about the game of basketball. Let's celebrate Satnam Singh Bhamara for achieving the near-impossible through his natural gifts, his hard work, his dedication, and the right attitude to become the best that he can possibly be. Let's celebrate the fact that Indian basketball and NBA news will never be the same again.
What do you get when you mix Satnam Singh Bhamara - the prospect dreaming of becoming India's first NBA player - and Hoopdarshan - the first Indian basketball podcast? Fireworks, of course! The 7-foot-2, 19-year-old giant Bhamara declared for the NBA draft last month and now hopes to become the first Indian player to make it to the league. On Episode 6 of Hoopdarshan, he joins hosts Kaushik Lakshman and Karan Madhok for an engaging discussion on the improvements he's made on the court over the past few years, his incredible journey from being the son of a Punjabi farmer to becoming an NBA prospect, his relationship with basketball in India, and going to his High School prom.
Born in the tiny Ballo Ke village in Punjab, Bhamara was scouted at age 14 (2010) by IMG Reliance and handed a scholarship to play at the IMG Basketball Academy in Florida, USA, where he has been for the past five years. Last month, Bhamara bypassed college to declare for the 2015 NBA Draft, as he hopes to become the first Indian citizen to play in the NBA. Bhamara has represented India at the international level several times over the past few years already and has been playing for the IMG team at the High School level in America. He is currently preparing for the draft with pre-draft workouts and visits to scouts at various interested NBA teams.
Hoopdarshan aims to be the true voice of Indian basketball, and since we're such hopeless fans of the game, it will become the voice of everything basketball related we love, from the NBA to international hoops, too. On every episode of Hoopdarshan, we will be inviting a special guest to interview or chat to about a variety of topics. With expert insight from some of the brightest and most-involved people in the world of Indian basketball, we hope to bring this conversation to a many more interested fans, players, and followers of the game.
These are exciting times if you're a seven-foot-plus Punjabi guy that plays basketball. Earlier this month, the 22-year-old 7-5 Canadian-Punjabi Sim Bhullar became the first player of Indian-descent to play in the NBA when he featured for the Sacramento Kings. Just a few weeks later, India may get their first citizen a step closer to the world's finest basketball league. 19-year-old 7-1 talent Satnam Singh Bhamara - who hails from the Ballo Ke village in Punjab but has perfected his skills at the IMG Academy in Florida, USA - has now declared for the 2015 NBA Draft.
Bhamara, who has represented India at the the Senior and Youth levels multiple times as a teenager already, is one of the finest basketball talents to ever come out of the country. His fascinating story saw him emerge as a farmer's son from the tiny Ballo Ke village in Punjab at age 10 to quickly become one of India's hottest young talents in less than four years. At 14, Bhamara was selected by the IMG on a scholarship programme to learn the game further and play at the IMG Basketball Academy in Bradenton, Florida. He has been there since 2010, only to return to India for holidays or to play in occasional national/international tournaments.
"I've declared for the NBA draft," Bhamara told me via a Skype conversation from Florida earlier this week, "Currently, I'm taking part in pre-draft training with three other prospects at IMG. From the next month, I have to go and do practices and pre-draft workouts with a number of NBA teams that are showing interest in me."
Bhamara said that he has been offered a lot of assistance in the process of learning and game and moving forward with his NBA fans by IMG coaches Dan Barto and Kenny Natt, the latter of whom was India's national team basketball coach from 2011-12 and played Bhamara in several international tournaments.
"My coaches suggested that I should try for the NBA draft," Bhamara said, "I've spent the last year practicing and working out, playing with Coach Natt's IMG team. My coaches have been training me hard. I think I've never practiced this hard in my life. I've felt like I've been training in the army, like the Khalsa Army!"
Bhamara is currently in Florida at IMG Academy, where he played for the post graduate team and averaged 9.2 points, 8.4 rebounds and 2.2 blocks in less than 20 minutes per game for the No. 2 team in the country. He drew recruiting interest from Purdue, Pittsburgh, USC, USF and UMass. In his report, Pete Thamel opined that Bhamara's game is considered to have a bigger upside than his Canadian-Indian predecessor Sim Bhullar. But despite his basketball talents, he couldn't secure a college scholarship in the United States.
"My grades weren't good enough for college," Bhullar told me, "I was asked by many people why I'm bypassing college, but the grades were a challenge. I could barely even speak English when I first came here. [His English is much more proficient now] I'm sure that if I had started earlier, I would've made it to college here."
Despite the academic setback, Bhamara is confident that he will be ready for the elite challenge that the NBA will bring.
"I've improved my speed, running up and down the court, and my shooting and post-play have both improved a bit," he said, "I've learnt how to react to different situations in the court, 24-second situations, 10-second situations, all types of tense situations. My coaches have told me that I'm ready for the NBA. In High School games here, I get guarded by three defenders each time, but in the NBA, I will be single-guarded because my outside shooters will be better. You can't leave them open, and one-one-one, I can work the man who's guarding me and have the power to go past him."
Around this time a year ago, Sim Bhullar - who played two years of NCAA D1 college basketball for New Mexico State - also declared for the NBA draft, before going undrafted, playing in the Summer League for the Kings, and eventually, heading to the NBA's Development League (NBDL). Bhamara is adamant that, if his NBA gamble doesn't work out, he will stay in the USA to continue striving for a shot at the top level of the game.
"If NBA team doesn't work out, I hope to try with the D-League, and then try for the NBA again," he said, "I want to try here in USA: this is where the level of basketball is the highest. I'm familiar with it. If I try to go play basketball in a league in another foreign country, I'll have to learn another language and get suited to another lifestyle, and it may get complicated."
Ultimately, Bhamara hopes to inspire others from India - especially those from far-out parts of the country outside of mainstream reach - to explore their NBA dreams, too.
"I want 10 more players to come out of India after me," he said, "I don't want to be the only one to be there. I want to work it out there and prove myself so that 10 more will come, and 20 more after that. I want to open a road in India for basketball. I'm from a small village, there could be others like me in small villages or towns in India who can dream of playing in the NBA."
I asked him if he had told his parents the news of his NBA declaration yet.
"They will only get the good news when I make it to the NBA!"
Ambitious words from a talent young man - but does he have enough to challenge the best and brightest basketball players in the world? Bhamara is currently not high in the picture of this coming summer's top draft prospects (the respected website DraftExpress.com ranks him at 94th) but he could change all that if he can impress scouts at the pre-draft workouts. Thamel added in his report that Bhamara has managed to stay injury free this past year and has shown improvements in shooting with both hands, being a reliable free throw shooter, and acting as a defensive presence. His weaknesses are his agility and lateral movement, writes Thamel, things that he can focus on as a professional for the next few years.
There will be hundreds of prospects competing for the same dreams that Bhamara strives for, but few - if any - will have a more intriguing story. At 10, he was farming in a tiny Indian village and told me that he didn't know the difference between basketball and volleyball. At 19, he finds himself working out with NBA teams and fighting for a spot in the world's finest basketball league. Regardless of what happens ahead, he has already improved and achieved beyond his wildest dreams. Indian basketball fans will be wishing that he can keep the momentum going so that he can become the first Indian player in the NBA and become a role model for millions others back home. Hopefully, his parents get to hear some good news, soon!
