It may not have quite the personal connotations for me, but Yahoo! has done it again with Todd Pitman’s piece on the difference former NBA-player Ndongo Ndiaye is making in his home country of Senegal. It’s a wonderful story about one basketball player realizing just how blessed he is and using those gifts off the court to better the world around him.

The similarity between the two tales is striking.

Reflecting on it afterwards, something else struck me that isn’t so beautiful, and that’s the contrast between these two African-born players who grew up in abject poverty and so many of their American urban poor counterparts. Both groups use basketball as the escape from their bleak circumstances. But while American players see the sport as their end-all and be-all (hardly news), the Africans view it as their gateway to education and any number of other opportunities that can give them better lives. If they make it as professional athletes, great, but if they don’t, they still take away something positive from their experience playing. The African players never receive the special treatment Americans do growing up and hence have no unrealistic expectations about their careers. Far too many Americans leave school with nothing if they aren’t good enough to make it as pros.

And that’s very sad. Thankfully there are players like Ndiaye to show the beauty of sports.

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