The young East African nation introduced itself July 20, a week before basketball started in Paris. The team led the United States, favorites to win its fifth straight Olympic gold medal, by as many as 16 points in an exhibition match. The Bright Stars held a late lead before LeBron James’s driving layup with eight seconds left rescued the Americans.

The result sparked concern from some American critics, and an outpouring of pride from the losing side, whose country became independent in 2011 following a 22-year civil war. Just 13 years after the country gained independence, the men’s basketball team will be its first in any sport to compete in the Olympics.

“We don’t have any indoor basketball courts in our country, we don’t have anything like that,” South Sudan forward Wenyen Gabriel told reporters after the game. “We’re a bunch of refugees that came together for a few weeks out of the year that [are] over here trying our best, playing against some of the best players ever. This is much bigger than basketball for us.”

Central to South Sudan basketball’s story is Luol Deng, the former Chicago Bulls standout who now serves as president of the South Sudanese Basketball Federation.

Since the 1950s, Sudan has experienced ongoing civil wars, and the country eventually split in 2011 when South Sudan became independent. Deng was born in the southern region of Sudan before that split, but his family later sought refuge in Egypt and was granted political asylum in England. He eventually moved to the United States, where he became a high school basketball star in New Jersey.

A two-time all-star, Deng played 15 NBA seasons and represented the United Kingdom internationally before his retirement in 2019. Later that year, he became South Sudan Basketball Federation president and in 2020 he doubled as head coach of its men’s senior team.

The program lacked facilities, funding and infrastructure, but Deng felt South Sudan had potential to become a force on the African continent, so he largely financed the operation.

“I had to pay myself,” Deng told Sports Illustrated. “A lot of people didn’t see what the point was. They didn’t see the vision of it. Changing people’s mind on how things have been done in the past and making people believe that this could be something special was difficult. To be honest, most of the people I spoke with didn’t see how this was a good thing to get into.”

During South Sudan’s struggle for independence and a subsequent civil war from 2013 to 2020, many people sought refuge beyond its borders. As a result, a generation of South Sudanese people grew up outside the country. Part of Deng’s challenge has been persuading those players to represent their nascent — if not unfamiliar — homeland instead of the countries to which their families fled. In other cases, South Sudan has had challenges obtaining FIBA clearance for those players to represent the country.

The team is playing in Paris without big men Bol Bol, Thon Maker, Ater Majok and Jo Lual-Acuil because of “personal reasons” or an inability to gain clearance from FIBA. Majok can’t play because he represented Lebanon before South Sudan gained independence; Maker, who previously played for Australia, recently was ruled ineligible.

Still, the Olympic roster includes former NBA players and stars from the Basketball Africa League.

Gabriel was born in Sudan but his family relocated to Egypt and he later moved to New Hampshire. He played at Kentucky, spent five seasons in the NBA and currently plays for Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Guard Carlik Jones was born in Cincinnati to Sudanese parents. He won G League player of the year in 2023 while on a contract with the Chicago Bulls and spent last season with the Zhejiang Golden Bulls in China.

Forward Nuni Omot was born in a refugee camp in Kenya and later moved to Minnesota. Forward JT Thor was born in Nebraska to South Sudanese parents. Other players such as Ottawa-born Marial Shayok come from families that moved to Australia or Canada.

The 17-year-old Maluach is considered to have the most upside of the group. The 7-foot-2 center was born in what is now South Sudan and grew up in neighboring Uganda, where he started playing basketball at 13. Ahead of his freshman season at Duke, Maluach is a projected lottery pick in the 2025 NBA Draft.

“I was so excited,” Maluach said of the first time he was called up to the national team at age 16. “I couldn’t wait just to put the jersey on and get on the floor and warm up with my teammates. And then having ‘South Sudan’ in front [on my jersey] gave me a lot of joy.”

When Deng first moved to the United States in 1999, he enrolled at Blair Academy in Blairstown, N.J., and quickly became friends with Royal Ivey. The New York-born guard gave Deng his first pair of basketball sneakers and his family hosted Deng during holidays.

More than two decades later, Ivey had closed a 10-year NBA career and was looking for greater coaching experience after he began as an assistant for the Oklahoma City Thunder’s G League affiliate in 2014. Ivey was an assistant coach for the Brooklyn Nets in late 2020 when he saw Deng coaching South Sudan in clips on Instagram. He said he reached out to his old friend offering to help as an assistant for the national team if needed. Deng eventually circled back to offer him the head coaching job.

“I just had a hunger to challenge myself. I didn’t know I was going to be the head coach,” Ivey said. “I just wanted to get the experience to be a part of a national team and do something different. Next thing you know, I’m in Kigali the following year coaching in AfroBasket.”

South Sudan had played well enough to qualify for the continental tournament held in Rwanda’s capital in 2021. The next step was the FIBA World Cup, and if the team performed well there, the world’s youngest nation could punch a ticket to Paris.

But first, Ivey said, he and his players had much to learn.

“At first I had to learn the culture, learn what they’ve been through, what their families have been through being refugees, fleeing, leaving the country,” Ivey said. “I’m from New York City. I was raised in Harlem during the early ’90s during the crack epidemic and I thought I had it rough, but that’s nothing compared to what these guys have been through.

“It’s very humbling. I’m getting more out of this experience than anything I’ve ever done in basketball as a player in the NBA. This has been eye-opening and life-changing for me.”

The NBA veteran said he first spent a lot of time reviewing the fundamentals for players who lacked the same foundation as those who may have developed stateside. Since then, he said the team has quickly evolved.

“It’s been night and day,” Ivey said of the team’s development from 2021 to now. “I remember coming in to the team and I was like, ‘How am I going to do this? Like, these guys?’ We couldn’t get through drills at certain points in time because they just never were exposed to certain kinds of drills and the fundamentals of the game. So I had to break it down and we built it up.”

South Sudan made its first appearance in AfroBasket at the 2021 tournament in Rwanda, where it advanced to the quarterfinals, but lost to eventual champion Tunisia.

Two years later, the country made its major international basketball tournament debut at the 2023 FIBA World Cup, where it clinched the nation’s first Olympic berth as the highest-finishing African team in the tournament. The decisive moment came after the team defeated Angola, but needed New Zealand to top Egypt. Several minutes remained in that game, so the team set up televisions in its locker room to watch the conclusion.

“We watched about three to four minutes and as soon as the buzzer sounded, it was pure celebration,” Ivey said of Egypt’s loss. “Guys were crying, guys were hugging each other, we were dancing, playing music. It was a joyous moment for everybody in that room and it was a joyous moment for the country to qualify for the Olympics.”

Maluach feels South Sudan has grown most on defense in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics. He said playing teams such as Serbia during the World Cup prepared them for a high level of competition.

That improvement was evident during the exhibition against the United States, in which Jones registered a triple-double with 15 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists. Shayok added 24 points, and Thor buried a three-pointer to give South Sudan a 100-99 lead with 20 seconds to play.

In Paris, they’ll meet again. South Sudan opened Group C play with a win over Puerto Rico. Its rematch against the United States comes on July 31, and it closes group play Aug. 3 against Serbia.

Ivey echoed the notion that South Sudan enters the Olympics without expectations. But that doesn’t mean he and Deng don’t harbor lofty ambitions.

“I want to see this thing grow exponentially,” Ivey said of South Sudan’s basketball program. “Before, Angola was a powerhouse, then you had Nigeria, then you had Tunisia. We want to be a powerhouse in Africa and this is the first step.”