Denver Nuggets’s forward Zeke Nnaji and his Nnaji Family Foundation were profiled on CBS News Minnesota, highlighting a whole new meaning to the word “success”. For Nnaji, it is not measured in the millions he earns yearly from his basketball contract, not in the bling, the cars and the designer gear. Instead, for the 24 year old, success is measured by how much you can impact on others.
This was clarified by his dad, Afam, in an interview with the channel, where he said that Nnaji junior as a mere 10 year old told his dad that when he makes it in the NBA, he was going to help a lot of people.
This spirit of giving back drove him to establish a basketball academy in Enugu, Nigeria, where his dad grew up. The facility not only coaches aspiring basketball talent to achieve their “hoop dreams”, it also has a STEM centre where young people can learn about AI, IT and so on to provide them with options in life skills that go beyond basketball.
The foundation has partnered with the NBA to run coaching clinics that have benefited schools in the area, including the College of the Immaculate Conception (CIC) Enugu.
NBA star Zeke Nnaji’s foundation inspires budding talents in Enugu, including CIC Enugu schoolkids
Coach Kerry Sutherland, who ran the clinics, said the first thing that struck him in Nigeria was the deprivation. But once you went beyond that, you saw the resilience of the kids.
Coach Kerry Sutherland at the Nnaji Foundation Academy in Enugu with one of the budding athletes.
Nnaji senior waxed biblical about why giving back is important to the foundation. Jesus made the point in Matthew 25:40 that whatever you do to “the least of these, you have done for me”, meaning that acts of kindness to the helpless and vulnerable are acts done directly to him.
