[BREAKING] Basketball: Nigeria win again, beat Argentina 94-71

Kelvin Ekerete
12 July 2021

D’Tigers continued their preparation for the forthcoming Tokyo 2020 Olympics with a dominating 94-71 win over fourth ranked Argentina in an exhibition in Las Vegas on Monday.

Both teams were physical in their approach but it was the Argentines who led 19-17 at the end of the first quarter.

D’Tigers returned with more zeal in the second quarter, outscoring the South Americans 26-14 to take a 10-point lead into halftime 43-33.

At the start of the second quarter, Ekpe Udoh had a block before going on to score the first points of the quarter, while Precious Achiuwa had the highest rebounds in the second quarter.

Jahil Okafor, who missed out on the team’s win over the United States on Sunday, scored eight points and five rebounds at half time. He finished the game with 15 points and seven rebounds.

Nicolás Laprovíttola led the Argentines in scoring in the first half with eight points.

D’Tigers kept their foot on the gas in the third quarter, taking a 19-point lead to finish the quarter 74-55

The team consolidated their effort in the final quarter finishing the game 94-71.

The result and performance from the team will leave head coach Mike Brown with a selection headache as he is expected to name his final 12-man roster July 17 before the team depart for Tokyo.

Nigeria are in Group B along with Australia, Italy and Germany and play their opening game against the Aussies July 25 at the Saitama Super Arena.

Unlike the game against the US, where they scored 60 points from the three point line, D’Tigers scored more field goals against the Argentines.

When you talk about bona fide stars in the National Basketball Association, we can pick at least 15 to 20 of them, half of them are on this damn roster, there's no excuse to lose to Nigeria, some dude Gabe Nnamdi who goes by Gabe Vincent for the Miami Heat, Caleb Agada, or Namu. . .however the hell you pronounce his name, you give up 60 points on 3s! Excuse me! You can do better than that. And oh, by the way, let's also look at Greg Popovich, cos he's a 5-time champion, one of the elite coaches this game has ever seen! He hasn't looked the same since Tim Duncan retired. A little bit different now. So let's look at everything

naptu2:
Former captains Al-Farouq Aminu and Ike Diogu watched the game together. They captioned the picture, "Watching what we built".

Gabe saw the picture and replied, "My brothers".

naptu2:
A US journalist asked Gabe why he had that name, "Nnamdi" on his jersey. Gabe said that he went back home and he introduced himself to somebody as Gabe. The person asked, "What is your name"? and he said, "Vincent". The person asked again and he said that his name was Gabe Vincent. The person looked at him as if he was crazy and asked again, "What is your name"? so he said, "Nnamdi" and the person shook his hand and said "Nice to meet you".

Since then he has used Nnamdi on his jersey whenever he is playing for Nigeria and Vincent on his jersey when he is playing in the US.


https://mobile.twitter.com/NigeriaBasket/status/1414271749521248257

naptu2:
Nigerians and Americans have criticised and condemned ESPN's Stephen A. Smith for disrespecting the Nigerian players. Stephen Smith said the following on his show.




https://mobile.twitter.com/stephenasmith/status/1414620449250725893

Many Africans and Americans felt that he was disrespectful towards the Nigerians players. Some African-Americans point to the fact that Stephen Smith was forced to apologise to Asian-Americans yesterday after he said that baseball pitcher, Shohei Ohtani, who is Japanese, should not be the face of the Major League Baseball because of his Japanese heritage. However, he has refused to apologise to Kwame Brown after making fun of his name and now he is disrespecting the Nigerian team. They say that this shows that he does not respect Africans.

mansakhalifa:
Argentines playing B/ball sounds like a good joke to me.



I can't just imagine it. Same goes for rugby too.