Head coach of Nigeria’s senior men’s national team, Mike Brown, has assured the team  will be ready in  time for the 2021 Afrobasket set to hold in Kigali, Rwanda.

With their first game against Mali tomorrow, Brown admitted that the timing of the competition just immediately after the summer Olympics has proved to be challenging for players and the coaching staff.

“It is just a bad timing for FIBA Africa to have the tournament, but FIBA decides to have the Asian and African games at the same time as the Olympics and NBA players cannot participate in both because that is the rule.”

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Brown  further said when asked why lots of regular faces were missing on the roster:  “It’s been a long summer for the players. They came to camp on June 20th , went through the Olympics process and I am asking them to come here. It is a long summer for everybody including the coaches and on top of that, the camp right now is at the same time when a lot of training camps are happening.”

He revealed that many of the players who participated during the Afrobasket qualifiers as well as the Olympics camp wanted to play but holding training camps with their various clubs made it extremely difficult.

Brown reckoned that if FIBA America and FIBA Europe thought it best to hold their competition next year, Africa should have adopted the same strategy so as to have the full complement of its stars around the world.

“So, it makes it difficult for us to have a competition like this. I think all competitions should happen next summer”