Sound Sultan is spearheading a new direction in basketball in the country, adding some glamour and razzmatazz which didn’t exist to how the game is played and its administration at all levels. News of his involvement in the game broke in September 2014 when it was reported that he had bought over popular basketball team, Lagos Islanders. In this exclusive interview with NET, he explains his true involvement with the team, adding that he just didn’t stumble into the game. ‘I played Basketball from 1991 till date.
I was the basketball team captain of my secondary school and even my university, that’s the kind of prominent role I’ve always played, so for me right now it’s not out of place that I now invest in the game,’ he said. Since he was this much involved, we queried why he didn’t take the game up as a career instead of music, and he said it was ‘because it wasn’t really viable and I used to get knocked down a lot by the bigger guys, moreso I had another talent that I could nurture which is music. But I never really left the corridors of basketball.’ For the first time, Sound Sultan explained that he’s not the sole owner of Lagos Islanders Basketball team as previously reported in the media; he says there are other partners. ‘This time around a group of young men came together with the aim of taking basketball in Nigeria to another level and get new converts to buy into the basketball industry. So for us, we have a man called Damoye who was the incumbent owner of the team, we have Ugo Udeze, Tajudeen Sulaiman and myself. I actually used to play for Dordan Warriors. So we all came together like Voltron and we all have our strong points. Damoye has owned the team for the past 8 years and he understands the politics involved in the industry and he guides us in the right direction, Ugo Udeze is the only certified African Agent in the NBA as one of us, he understands the level at which the NBA operates and can infuse into the Nigerian industry as well.’ You could have been part of any other team, why Lagos Islanders, we asked and the Naija Ninjaz boss said: ‘Well, I’m resident in Lagos, the fact that the ‘Lagos’ name is in it is another factor and we’ve not even gone the route of getting Lagos to sponsor us yet.’ He however declined to respond to our question on how much he personally invested in the team. ‘If you look at me I don’t ever put monetary values on anything I do because you can’t monetise me. For me, whatever I do be it my cars, house, I don’t have to tell you how much I bought it because it’s passion driven.
Source: thenet.ng
