Nigeria’s male basketball team, D’tigers defeat the United States of America 90-87 in a pre-Olympics warm-up game in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Sunday morning.
The team went into the game with six NBA players and they became the first African to secure a victory over the Americans.
Although the match isn’t competitive, it was perfect revenge for the Nigerian side that suffered heavy defeats in the hands of the Americans in 2012 and 2016.
The Americans had gone 39-0 in their last three Olympic seasons, including pre-Olympic exhibitions on their way to gold medals, and had been 54-2 in major exhibitions since NBA players began playing for USA Basketball in 1992.
They’d beaten Nigeria by a combined 127 points in their last two meetings, one at the 2012 London Games, the other a warm-up for the 2016 Rio Games.
Nigeria lost to the U.S. at the 2012 Olympics by 83 points and lost to the Americans again four years later in an exhibition by 44 points.
Nigeria, which had 12 NBA players in its 49-man training camp in California and seven in uniform on Sunday, was led by Gabe Vincent who scored 21 points.
The victory is a perfect statement from the ahead of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo which will begin in the next couple of days.
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