Getting to know Team Africa: Salah Mejri

The NBA has had five Arab players or players of Arab descent represent the region in the League. Of the five, Salah Mejri stands tallest, both literally and figuratively. The Tunisian center, who measures an intimidating 7-foot-2, so far remains the first Arab player born and raised on the African continent to play in the NBA. Alaa Abdelnaby, the Egyptian who blazed the trail for north Africans in the League, was drafted in 1990 having spent 20 years in the United States, already a citizen. That is after departing the continent as a toddler.

The other two players from the region who preceded Mejri into the League —the Libyan pair of Raed Elhamali (originally Randy Holcomb, drafted 2002) and Hesham Salem (Hiram Fuller) who averaged 10.8 minutes per game for the Atlanta Hawks in the 2003/04 season —were both born in the United States. In fact, the only other player from the region in the NBA, Abdel Nader, had also lived in the United States for 20 years, and was a naturalized American before the NBA called. Physically, Mejri is the biggest of them all.

Mejri will also become the first north African to represent the continent at the NBA Africa game, a welcome platform following a highly controversial second season in the NBA.

He had an uneventful first season after getting the chance to star in the League he first attempted to breach in 2008. That year, the rangy 22-year-old from Etoile du Sahel in the Tunisian League, saw his hopes of playing in the NBA dashed, as he was left undrafted after declaring his readiness to run with the best. Undaunted, he took his game to Europe two years later. He played with Antwerp Giants for two years in Belgium before shifting base to Spain in 2012. Then the fun started.

He won the ACB Rising Star Award in 2013, and followed that individual honor with the Copa del Rey titles in 2014 and 2015. He also landed the Supercopa de Espana titles with Real Madrid, added the Liga ACB Championship in 2015 and ended a fabulously productive 2015 with the Euroleague Championship. Those feats finally caught the eye, and the Dallas Mavericks came calling. A career in the NBA was born. But it hasn’t been easy. His first season in the United States was spent flitting between the Mavericks in the NBA, and in the D League (now the G League) with the Texas Legends.

The serial winner in Europe struggled for playing time in the more competitive NBA, after finally getting on the Mavericks roster at the start of the 2016/17 season. He’d played only 34 games, averaging just 11.7 mpg in only six starts in his roving season; the just ended season was better. Mejri managed to get more minutes – 12.4 per game – in 73 contests, but logged only 11 starts. But he knows he is improving.

In an interview with KweséESPN at the tail end of last season, Mejri famously said: “Maybe I play bad, but I play hard”, mirroring the mindset of his role model, Kevin Garnett. And that physicality has not gone down well with some of the teams he came up against. The in-game altercation with Houston Rocket’s Trevor Ariza, which almost spilled over into the locker room, is a good example of how his aggressive play and the trash talking that usually accompanies it, can sometimes wrongly define a fiery competitor.

Mejri stacked up fouls last season, but also thrives in pick-and-roll situations, with the highlight of his season coming in the 113-95 defeat of Philadelphia in February. He totaled 16 points and grabbed 17 rebounds. Now he wants more. The Tunisian has made plans to spend a couple of weeks in Germany with shooting coach Holger Geschwinder, the man who helped Dirk Nowitzki hone the skills that have fetched over 30,000 NBA points.

Mejri, who was named MVP at the FIBA Africa Basketball Championships (also known as AfroBasket) in 2011 may not have enough yet to be named MVP at the NBA Africa Game, but his intensity, and hopefully his new-found jump shot, will certainly be an interesting addition to the loaded Team Africa when Team World comes calling.

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