Basketballghana.com can confirm Nigeria’s National Men’s Basketball Team (D’Tigers) Center Chimezie Metu has blasted Nigerian officials for what he deems as lack of empathy to athletes that played a role in the team’s abysmal performance in Tokyo.
He made these scathing remarks on his Twitter in the aftermath of Nigeria’s elimination from the Tokyo Olympics where the team lost all three games in Group B.
The situation was the same in the Women’s Division where D’Tigres lost all three games in Group B to USA, Japan and France. The Men’s team dropped games to Australia, Germany and Italy.
Nigeria turns its attention to the 2021 AfroBasket where D’Tigress are the defending champions and D’Tigers won silver at the last edition held in 2017. The competition runs from August 24 to September 5 in Kigali, Rwanda.
The Sacramento Kings player wrote, “I’d like to use this time to bring awareness and comment on the off-the-court things a lot of Nigerian athletes have had to go through in these Olympics. It’s extremely difficult to go out there and try to focus on the basketball game. We see other countries and how they’re living, and it’s just so smooth for them. Man, what I wouldn’t give to have that…It was a lack of attention to detail and lack of empathy for the hard work that’s put in by us athletes by the Nigerian Olympic committee as well as the government.”
By Yaw Adjei-Mintah
@YawMintYM on Twitter
