Despite early exit from the basketball event of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan,
Coach Mike Brown has pledged commitment to lead Nigeria’s national team – D’Tigers to the 2021 Afrobasket Championship in Kigali, Rwanda come September.
The D’Tigers failed to win a match in Tokyo after losing to United States, Japan and Italy to become one of the teams that exited early in the competition but coach Brown has now shifted focus to FIBA Afrobasket which starts later this month.
Nigeria is drawn in Group C alongside Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya and Mali with D’Tigers’ first group match against Mali on August 25 and the American tactician believes the team has learnt some lessons from Tokyo.
“I coached in Afrobasket (African qualifying tournament) during a pandemic in 2020 in November and had no problems,” Brown told Boston Globe.
The players involved, as long as they want to keep coming back, I’m going to keep fighting for them. And I’m going to get this program headed in the right way because this program can be really good. We hit a few speed bumps during this Olympics and it hurts,” he added.
The coach however, faulted the arrangement for the team in Tokyo, which he admitted also affected the team’s performance.
Brown, who said four of his coaches weren’t allowed to attend games, took over Nigeria in an attempt to push the emerging basketball country to the next level.
He has been an NBA coach for the Lakers and Cavaliers and is currently an assistant with the Golden State Warriors.
