Afghani-American basketball player Joseph Osman (191-G, college: Florida Southern) made a recent visit to his home country where he met basketball and sports authorities and he trained with a team planning to go to Doha to play basketball in the name of Afghanistan. Joseph hopes he can lead the team when they go to the Gulf. He has had experience playing college basketball at Berkeley California and at Florida Southern. He also played in USBL’s Lakeland Ducks (refer to our colleague Kristian Santiago’s piece in February 2006). Joseph Osman says he can be equally useful as a point guard, a shooting guard and a small forward. Add to this a recent professional basketball season at Ohod, Saudi Arabia (15ppg and 9apg) and you’ve got one talented basketballer and a greatly motivated individual. Come to think of it, even the idea of going to Afghanistan for basketball seems so remote, yet he went and made an impression.

The welcome by the sports authorities to him was warm. Nazir Ahmad Shah Wardak President of Afghani Basketball and coach Ghous Nikbeen the1988 Afghan National Player of the Year and current Afghani Youth Coach were fully supporting the project. In the two weeks he spent in the country, Joseph Osman says he met so many good players. “They do it for the love of the game, not for an ego boost” he says. “It was great to see Afghan’s involved with sports. They rarely get the opportunity for someone to help teach them so it was fulfilling showing them different techniques and form” adding that the best compliment he got was when he was told in Pashto ‘Kha da chay raghlay’ which means, "It's so great you came". “I also learned a lot from them,” he says, “About history, objectives, where are they trying to go from here”. When listening to them, he fondly remembered his own deceased father who always told him "You can get anything you want in life, if you help enough people get what they want". I found in these guys so much respect and eagerness to learn, Joseph Osman says. Three or four of the players he met can be legitimate D-2 talented players. No question. And they are young and so hungry, he concludes.

The Afghani basketball team trains at Herat Stadium at the earliest hours of the morning running laps, and playing games 3 times a week. The final roster is not decided, but the team will depend on local talents plus possible Afghani recruits from the US leagues including Osman. There are possibly around 50 local basketball players that coach Ghous Nikbeen can rely on. What the Afghani coach wants in the US recruits is that they have a complete game. If what we will get is a flurry of guys that can only shoot, we have plenty of good shooters here, the coach says. We need something more in the players who want to play for us, he adds. He has a tentative list of the possible players who have expressed some interest to join in (passport details, positions, ages).

It is worthwhile to note that out of the 27 Afghani provinces, only in the capital Kabul and in Herat region bordering Iran is there any meaningful basketball activity because of availability of basketball courts. But basketballers are making headways in other fields too. Very recently, Afghani basketball star named Sabrina Sagheb contested a seat in the lower house, and at 25 years of age became the youngest woman to stand in Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections in 2005.

Somehow I feel this will not be the end of this story. It seems like ages when I first talked with Joseph Osman and he talked about his aspirations for Afghani basketball. Now just looking back and reviewing what has been achieved, one feels we have certainly got so much closer to these aspirations. As the saying goes: The only treasure in the life we live, is in the measure of the love we give”. And that’s all that matters really. With so much love and enthusiasm and determination, anything is possible.

Joseph Osman website: http://www.josephosman.com  

Additional pictures of Joseph Osman and Afghani coach and players here