Johannesburg's Made By Ball (MBB) are upbeat for their debut in Africa’s biggest tournament, the Basketball Africa League (BAL), and have vowed to make the playoffs in their first attempt. 

The BAL is like football’s Caf Champions League and sees all the best basketball teams in Africa compete. South Africa are yet to have a team win the competition.

This is the fifth season of BAL and the closest any South African team has come to glory was when the Cape Town Tigers finished fourth in 2024. The MBB, who are not as well-resourced as their American-owned predecessors, the Tigers, will be punching above their weight in an attempt to remove the monkey from the country’s back. 

Their road to the finals will begin in the Nile Conference at the BK Arena in Kigali, Rwanda, from Saturday to May 25. The conference includes Rwanda’s APR and will feature two other debutants in Nairobi City Thunder (Kenya) and Al Ahli Tripoli (Libya).

When MBB step onto the court in Kigali, the fairy-tale will become a reality for their owner, Cyril Tshabalala.

MBB were founded as a social club in 2010 by a group of players who had moved from KwaZulu-Natal to Gauteng. 

They continued plying their trade in the amateur ranks and semi-professional leagues in Gauteng, notably the regional Inner-City Super League, where they won back-to-back championships in 2023 and 2024.

It was at this point that Tshabalala took a leap of faith and registered the team as a professional side on the advice of Lebesa Selepe, who at the time was the captain of the Cape Town Tigers, South Africa’s first team to feature in the BAL. 

On that advice, MBB joined the Basketball National League (NBL) for the 2024 season and later also won the Basketball SA-organised National Championship title under the guidance of Tshabalala. 

It was that national championship title which earned them the right to play in the 2025 BAL qualification Elite 16 phase, where they became the third South African team on the road to BAL, behind the Jozi Nuggets and the Cape Town Tigers.

In Kigali, MBB will be mentored by Sam Vincent, who is a 1986 NBA champion with Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics and Michael Jordan’s former teammate on the Chicago Bulls. 

He will be returning to African basketball in Kigali after coaching the South African national team and the Nigerian men’s and women’s national teams at the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004 and FIBA Basketball World Cup in 2006, respectively.

Tshabalala, who has been juggling the role of owner-coach at MBB for the past 15 years, explained the acquisition of Vincent, who was assistant coach for the NBA team Dallas Mavericks in the mid-2000s.

“I did self-recognition in terms of that I can’t do everything,” he said.

“The BAL is on the international stage and I needed to recognise my strengths and weaknesses and see what was needed for the benefit of the club.

“Sam is an experienced coach who has coached at the highest level in basketball around the world, and we felt he was the right man for the job.”

Vincent will have the experience of former Cape Town Tigers captains Selepe and Peter Prinsloo and former South African national team captain Neo Mothiba. 

Tshabalala said having such players and coaching personnel could give them a competitive edge over the other debutants in the conference and even the hosts APR.

“We played City Thunder in the qualifiers and they beat us in Kenya,” he said.

“But we were a different team back then.

“We now have the experience of playing on the continental stage.

“Our concern is the North African team [Al Ahli Tripoli] because they usually have members who have played in Europe and are experienced.”

Former NBA player with the Miami Heat (NBA Finals 2020) and Dallas Mavericks and ex-NBA G League player Chris Silva will wear the colours of Al Ahli Tripoli. 

Though MBB has made it this far into the BAL, Tshabalala said they were still looking for a cash injection to cover certain departments in the club, saying they had written to the department of sport for a boost in terms of funding and were awaiting a response.