The Tanzanian Devil

Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim calls him "the best we've had in this league." His own coach, John Calhoun, says he is "one of the most amazing forces in basketball in America." I call him "the Tanzanian orphan I wish we would have sponsored the most."

I mean, the 67 Tanzanian orphans we did sponsor were cute and all, but ... have you seen "The Air Up There"? How cool would it be to have a badass NBA player feel a sense of obligation towards you?

One of my Mzungu friends who lived in Dar es Salaam for five years -- he is the son of the former Belgian ambassador to Tanzania -- got to play with Thabeet one day when the 7'3" monster came to practice in the nice, indoor gym at the international school there. Not only did he play with him, but he threw the future top five NBA pick an alley oop.

I just got daps from him.

For the first and only time during my time in Africa, I was able to meet someone who stood out even more than me.

He was at our court in Soweto for about an hour, and was supposed to have been accompanied by Dikembe "Who Wants to Sex?" Mutombo. But Mutombo was M.I.A., and the lone Mbongo, the slang term for a Tanzanian, was swarmed by throngs of his countrymen from Arusha, none of whom came within a foot of his towering, awkward frame.

"Mazoezi tu," I remember him mumbling, barely audible in his shy, baritone voice -- one that is as deep if not deeper than the Cookie Monster Mutombo's. "Just practice." That was the lie he was telling to all the short little Tanzanian fans he had staring up at him, when asked what the secret was to success on the basketball court. Mazoezi? TU? How about mazoezi NA UREFU SANA. Practice and height. Zaidi ya fiti saba. More than seven feet of it.

I waited for a lull in group conversation and asked him how he enjoyed Houston, where he played his high school ball.

"It's a nice place," he said. And then he gave me a fist bump -- or, depending on your perspective, I gave him a fist bump.

The last time I'd gotten to meet a famous athlete like that, it was when Vince Young, "cousin" of my junior high basketball coach Ivory Young, came over to our house on Christmas Eve in 2004, the night before the Texas team left for Pasadena and their Rose Bowl matchup with Michigan. I gave him that wonderful custom appropriated by us white boys from black culture, the "slap hug," before he left.

Vince ran for 192 yards and four touchdowns, passed for 180 yards and another score and drove the Longhorns to the winning kick in that game as a result.

Thabeet, who only gave me the fist bump, and no hug, then proceeded to shoot around on our court, and missed badly on his first 12 or 13 shots, making me wonder just how much mazoezi he had actually put in during his life.

But after getting a call from Chase this afternoon and hearing that Thabeet dropped 25, 20 and nine (nine blocks is by far the most impressive part of that stat line) against Seton Hall today, I'm feeling pretty proud of my boy.