Nigerian teen’s journey of hope and hoops takes spotlight at Andrew Wiggins’ basketball camp: ‘A dream come true’

By the time 15-year-old Obatofunmi Olubunmi-Davies and his family were ready to board a flight from Winnipeg to Toronto this past week, he had already narrowed his list of questions for NBA champion Andrew Wiggins to two.

He would ask about how to handle pressure under the spotlight, and about the player’s mindset going into a game — how to get better with every play.

“Just to see him standing next to me, it’s like a dream come true … to just be able to meet someone of his stature,” the kid known as Oba said Sunday, with Wiggins by his side. “I just feel like it’s going to definitely help me improve.”

Oba was one of hundreds of kids selected to participate in Wiggins’s Let’s Get It Done basketball camp, held over the weekend at Life Time Fitness in Mississauga. But his journey — including a bone-marrow donation to help ailing younger brother Anu — was vastly different from anyone else’s.

Born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, Oba loved sports from an early age. But soccer, not basketball, was practically the only one easily accessible.

Mom Obiageli said the biggest challenge in raising Oba and Anu in Lagos was safety. While the Nigerian capital is often portrayed in movies as opulent, there is a lot of crime.

“My kids were never together playing in the streets,” she said.

Winters were especially challenging when the family immigrated to Canada and settled in Winnipeg in 2016 — they chose Manitoba largely because of its growing Nigerian community. But Obiageli said the environment allowed her kids to thrive and “play outside without fear” at nearby playgrounds.

That’s when Oba discovered and ultimately fell in love with basketball, through school sports at first. When the Toronto Raptors won the NBA championship in 2019, that only increased his passion for the game, watching it being played at the highest level in his adoptive country.

“I started watching these YouTube videos, and I would practise the moves in the basement every day and just got better at it,” he said about working on his game during COVID-19 lockdowns. Some basement lights got broken in the process, and his mother installed a net on their driveway. There was no going back.

Now five-foot-eight and playing at Winnipeg’s Miles Macdonell Collegiate, Oba’s court skills are impressive. But it was a selfless gesture off the court that all but sealed his ticket to Wiggins’s camp.

In June, camp sponsor Reliance Home Comfort held a contest to select one kid from Winnipeg for the event — run by the Wiggins World Foundation — and Oba’s story caught everyone’s attention. He had recently missed half a season following a bone-marrow donation for his brother, who was born with sickle cell disease. Anu is now completely healthy after the transplant. Mike Kolatschek, Reliance’s manager of corporate communications, called Oba a “remarkable young man” for such a “selfless act.”

After hours of interaction and skills training with the kids on Saturday and Sunday, Wiggins — who was born in Toronto and raised in nearby Vaughan — said the camps triggered a lot of childhood memories for him.

“My dad (Mitchell, a former NBA guard) is the one who started this camp a long time ago when I was a kid,” said the 27-year-old Wiggins, while emphasizing the importance of giving back to the community.

There’s no entry fee, and campers get free food and drinks: “It’s all about love here.”

The Golden State Warriors star also heaped praise on Oba for putting family first to help his brother.

“He is a soldier,” Wiggins said with a hand around Oba’s shoulder. “A lot of people can’t do what he did.”

From safety fears on the streets of Lagos to endless dribbling at their Winnipeg home to learning the ropes from an NBA champion, Obiageli said she can’t help but feel pride. On Sunday, she sat courtside with Anu, watching Oba run through drills, giving him the thumbs up.

“When I go to his games, I’m one of those parents who are shouting on the sidelines,” she said. “His dream is to be an NBA player, and I truly believe he will achieve that.”

Oba believes it, too, and he’s eager to learn from the best.

An avid Boston Celtics fan — he’d hoped to mention that to Wiggins, to get a laugh — Oba said basketball has helped him through tough times. He calls his younger brother an inspiration, and hopes to get into a good college program to continue his progress.

He knows it won’t be easy.

“My work ethic is what got me here in the first place,” said Oba, who often starts training at 4 a.m. “I know my mom works very hard for me, to be able to focus on my craft and get it done.”

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