By Boris Esono Nwenfor
Fit, focused, determined, great skills and hardworking, are some of the adjectives that describe Kwain Kennedy Lamiress, a young and aspiring basketballer residing in Bamenda, North West Region of Cameroon. Following his passion and dreams, Kennedy Nkwain has registered in Mustard Seed Academy, a Basketball academy in Bamenda.
His routine may not be as smooth, and fancy with all the gadgets, technology and equipment of the best NBA basketballers, but that has not stopped him from dreaming of one day reaching the pinnacle of basketball, the NBA, one day. His role model coincidently is NBA great Lebron James who currently plays for the LA Lakers.
Kennedy is best known online for his intense workouts and their humble settings — often a faded, clay court, or the inside of a dirt-floored room — and makeshift nature — pushing rusted tires and leg-pressing stones. In his videos, local kids act as human resistance bands, pulling him back as he dribbles up and down the court. Friends join in for drills, using sticks to try and poke the ball out from under Kennedy’s gloved hands.
Each day for Kennedy starts around 7 a.m. After helping his parents with household chores, he leaves for the 25-minute journey to the recognizable clay court from his videos. There, he’ll train for three to four hours a day, and often asks passersby to film the videos that he’ll upload onto social media. Later, he heads to a makeshift gym for about 1.5 hours of weight work, and finishes the day with dinner, replying to DMs, and of course, gaming.
Strapped with a rope on his waist with three tires, Nkwain Kennedy showcases his talent that can only be compared to the NBA greats like Stephen Curry. He juggles the ball with ease while running up a hill in one of his videos online and even does his training like free throws with a makeshift hoop.
“Nobody will do it for you. (You) need to work hard to make it happen,” 21-year-old Kennedy, who turns 22 on October 27, wrote on his official Facebook account.
“My dream from Day one was to play in the NBA and always been that. The NBA team I wish to play for is the LA Lakers. It is because LeBron James inspires me a lot. I just want to learn a little bit about his mentality before he retires from the game. I just want to get that little piece of what he has, what makes him great,” he told africanews in an interview back in 2021.
“Since the beginning of the crisis in my country that’s been going on, I started training because I wanted my dream to come true. To give kids hope that it doesn’t matter where you come, you can achieve what you want.”
“Because it is not just about basketball here in the northwest region. There is a lot of talent here, in football, volley and others but kids are giving up because of where they come from and the Covid-19 pandemic. So, I just want to use basketball as a platform to inspire other people to work hard to achieve their dreams,” Kennedy added.
With basketball seen as an inferior competition in the past when compared to football, things have started to shift with basketball gaining popularity in recent years due to the NBA putting more interest on the continent. In 2017, the NBA launched NBA Academy Africa to develop young talent from the continent. Two years later, the Basketball Africa League (BAL) was co-founded by the NBA and FIBA. In the NBA, two top players, Joel Embiid and Pascal Siakam come from Cameroon.
“Millions of kids in Africa are more motivated because they are seeing their brothers getting their shot,” said Kennedy, “In the years to come, I think basketball will compete with soccer in Africa.”
