#NigeriaAt55: How The Nigerian Basketball Team ‘D’Tigers’ Fared Through The Years

Basketball as a sporting event was officially inaugurated in Nigeria in 1964 when the national basketball team joined FIBA.

D’Tigers won the Afrobasket 2015 tournament

The great United States has a lot of impact in the Nigerian national team as the Nigerian basketball team is dominated by Nigerian Americans.

It took the most populous Black Country in the world forty-two years before they could qualify for the World Basketball championships in 2006 which was hosted in Japan.

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Nigeria, called D’Tigers first qualified for the African championships in Senegal, 1972. In the tourney, the current African champions finished 12th having lost all their games.

At the Olympics, Nigeria was represented at the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. They lads finished the group play with a 1–4 record, having defeated Tunisia, in what would be their first ever Olympic game the first ever Olympic victory.

However, since 1995, the team has been very promising as they have qualified for every African championship.

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In 2015, all efforts of the team yielded maximum results as the team against all odds emerged the ‘King’ of African basketball. Nigeria won her first ever AfroBasket, beating Angola in the final 74–65. As a result, the team has automatically qualified for the 2016 Olympics.

The most notable player in the 2015 team is Chamberlain “Champ” Emeka Oguchi who equally emerged the best player of the championship having scored an average 16.6 points per game.

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