The Legend of Manute Bol

manb is the most unique player in NBA history and we're not only talking about his freakishly long limbs just about everybody knows that minut was 76 and that just his legs were 5 ft long but just like his physical appearance his life story was different from any other NBA player ever other than manuk nobody traded 80 cows in exchange for their wife nobody had to walk for 3 days just to reach the nearest basketball court or have their teeth removed to be respected as a man and while most NBA players only saw lions in the zoo or while watching National Geographic minut had to live amongst lions and allegedly killed one with a spear bull was also a great humanitarian who warned America about Osama Bin Laden way before 9/11 and was one of the key people in South Sudan's fight for independence this is the story of the most unusual NBA player ever and his unbelievable path from the African desert to NBA superstardom man was born into a royal family but it wasn't like he was living in a castle or slept on sheets his grandfather was a tribe Chief in turai a small village in South Sudan in the middle of the African Savannah they were part of the Dinka tribe who are the tallest people on Earth man's grandfather was allegedly 7' 10 his father was 6' 10 and his mom was 6'8 B's family lived in sheds filled with cockroaches but they had plenty of cows and cows were worshiped in their culture and served as the major currency however young minut didn't want to be an illiterate cow herder like the rest of his village so when his father asked him to particip participate in a manhood initiation ritual where they would remove his lower teeth and Scar his head minut ran away from home he loved his teeth and thought the ritual was stupid all he wanted was to go to school bull ran away from home two times walking for a few days to reach the nearest town with a school but at the age of 14 after he heard that his mother had died minut felt terribly guilty and decided to come back B finally agreed to do the manhood ritual partly because he wanted to get closer to his father and partly because he knew that Dinka girl wouldn't consider him as marriage material if he hadn't done it this right of passage was a huge deal in his tribe and if he flinched or cried during the teeth removal or head scarring ritual it would be considered a disgrace and he could never find a wife however he would probably stay an illiterate cattle farmer all his life if someday in 1978 a local politician didn't visit turai where he was amazed by man's height they took a picture together where minut ended up in the newspapers and that changed everything B's distant relative was a basketball player and when he saw Man's picture he immediately wanted minut to pursue a basketball career but to get to the nearest basketball court in the city of wow man had to walk 50 miles between that hike and minut not being too thrilled about basketball it wasn't long before he went back to his home Village but his basketball playing cousin didn't want to give up on him so he sent another Mutual relative on a mission to convince minut to play Joseph Victor buo a pilot with Sudan Airways came to turai to talk to minut telling him that there's a basketball league in America called the NBA and he could become rich and famous if he took basketball seriously and when minut heard that the choice was easy disregarding his father's complaints wealth and fame had more appeal than the family cows so in November of 1979 he started playing again but to say that he was terrible would be an understatement when he first got here he couldn't do anything he was weak and got pushed around even a small player could pass by him and score offensively B could not control his feet even when he walked he didn't know how to handle the ball properly or shoot a jump shot Man's first coach and yet this wasn't the worst problem B had because of a birth defect three of his right-hand fingers were slightly clawed which made it hard for him to catch the ball but because he had an extreme motivation to move out of Sudan and go to America B learned the fundamentals and improved quickly B's footwork on defense became much better and he developed a remarkable sense of timing for blocking shot minutu was right-handed but because of the clawed fingers on that hand he learned to swat away basketballs with his left hand and it wasn't long before his team became the best in the country basketball was everything B ever did at that time until the spring of 1982 when he met a beautiful Dinka girl whom he intended to marry her dad accepted man's proposal but he wanted 50 cows for his daughter's hand in marriage Man's father thought that was too expensive because the girl's family didn't have many cows and he felt that they were being robbed B senior then gave the ultimatum 35 cows or the wedding was off the bride's father didn't accept and just like that it was all over and minut was destroyed so more than ever he put all his focus into basketball and just a few months later an American Colgate coach Don fely came to sedan to help coach the local military team when fely first saw minut with his 7 foot6 frame and his 86 wingspan his jaw dropped to the floor and then when bold dunked without jumping and could touch both sides of the backboard simultaneously fely knew that bow was destined to play in the NBA when fely came back to the states he kept raving about minut to Kevin Mackey the head coach at Cleveland State coach Mackey was very intrigued by B and in 1983 he arranged for minut to come to Cleveland however because Dinka people didn't have birth certificates Man's real age was a mystery his passport only said his hometown and that he was 5'2 when they measured me I was sitting down B later explained with the help from a local immigration office Mackey basically invented a birthday for bow October 16th 1962 I wanted to make sure he was young enough to make him College eligible because every athletic door is open at 19 and every athletic door is closed when you're 35 Mackie but while Mackey and some other people speculated that minut was over 30 when he came to America he was probably only a few years older than his imaginary birthday meaning that in 1983 he was about 25 years old unfortunately for coach mecky bull was completely illiterate which meant he couldn't meet the academic requirements necessary for basketball eligibility so they sent him to nearby Case Western University to learn English still despite the Shady information in his documents the fact that he barely spoke English and that he weighed only 190 lb at 7 fo6 bow already had an NBA team ready to draft him through Don fy's relationship with the Clippers head coach Jimmy Lyman the Clippers found out about bow and were ready to roll the dice on him selecting him in the fifth round of the 1983 NBA draft with the 97th overall pick the whole NBA was stunned because nobody had ever heard of B but man never ended up playing for the clippers because Bowl had not stated his intention to enter the draft 45 days before it was held the draft selection was voided B then continued his career at the University of Bridgeport which was one of the rare universities that also offered an English learning program unsurprisingly when he first arrived at the Bridgeport campus bull was at first treated like a UFO when he started playing the hype got even bigger as people were eager to see minut in action and B did not disappoint in his one season at Bridgeport he averaged 22.5 points 13.5 rebounds and seven blocks per game pretty soon Bowl became extremely popular and he wasn't just Don fely's secret Prospect anymore as the whole NBA knew about him but while fely wanted him to stay in college and continue developing minut needed money to support himself and his family back in Sudan and after a short stint for the Rhode Island Gos in a minor basketball league b declared for the 1985 NBA draft he was still extremely skinny inexperienced and probably the least skilled out of all the players in the draft but his height and length were B's golden ticket and the Washington Bullets couldn't resist selecting him in the second round as the 31st overall pick as a rookie B appeared in 80 games completely sucking on offense and being an absolute Menace on defense Bowl blocked 397 shots that season which was and still is the second highest total in NBA history minut was still super thin at 205 lb and he was easily pushed around jammed over Ball but thin doesn't mean he was soft when jwan oldum a center for the Chicago Bulls shoved and punched him in a game B responded he knocks down oldum with a punch that triggered a massive brawl between the two teams however his temper wouldn't get tested often as everybody viewed Bowl as a gentle giant which he was soon minut became immediate a sensation Landing endorsements typically reserved for far more established players before his second season the bullets wanted to improve B's greatest liability as a player his lack of strength when he first arrived in Washington minut could only do 10 reps on bench press with 44 lbs and 10 reps of squats with 55 lbs so in the summer B attended a nutrition camp in New Orleans eating more than he had ever eaten in his life he gained 30 lbs in 6 weeks and reported to the bullets preseason camp visibly stronger and yet yet the arrival of Hall of Fame center Moses Malone meant less playing time for Bowl which dropped him from 26 minutes per game in his rookie year to only 19 minutes as a sophomore however he still averaged 3.7 blocks per game with the Highlight game when Bowl registered an unusual triple double 10 points 19 rebounds and an unbelievable 15 blocked shots in his third season minut played even less and the only notable thing from That season is that he was the teammate of Mugsy Bogues the shortest player in NBA history with a 28 in difference between them at this point the novelty of Living in America wore off and minut was getting homesick due to the Civil War in Sudan that started in 1983 the year he moved to America B wasn't able to come home for years he couldn't even attend his father's funeral slowly but surely minut was becoming extremely depressed and one of the biggest reasons was that he couldn't find a Dinka wife in America and could never marry a woman that's not from his culture but finally in 1988 he found a Dinka woman he wanted to marry through a mutual friend paying an 80 Cal doy for her hand later that summer the Wizards traded him to the Warriors where minut started playing more minutes again leading the league in blocks with 4.3 rejections in just 22 minutes per game and despite his blocking prowess most players wanted to put minut on a poster and dunk all over him and Michael Jordan wasn't the exception during a game in 1989 Jordan succeeded in his mission and dunked all over Manu and his 7 fo4 teammate Ralph Samson when Samson asked bow what happened minut answered with the phrase no American had heard before my bad his broken English made everyone laugh and by the end of the season the whole NBA started saying my bad when they made a mistake the phrase soon became mainstream even though some people dispute that bow had anything to do with it well he he came over and he said he calls it my bad so now all the Warriors they say my bad B stayed with the Warriors for two seasons after which they traded him to the 76ers with the Sixers bll cashed in signing a three-year deal for 4.5 million but minut wasn't good at keeping his money throughout his time in the NBA B had given money to any family member who asked for it it didn't matter who it was because in Dinka culture every family member is to be treated the same as your closest brother other than his family B also gave a lot of money more than $3 million to a Sudanese countrymen in the war for independence he organized Charities appeared in Congress talking about the war as well as secretly traveled to Sudan and visited the war zone while still being an act NBA player minut was one of the first people who warned Congress of a man who lived in Sudan and plotted the death of Americans Osama Bin Laden it's a mystery how he knew the al-Qaeda leaders intentions almost a decade before 9/11 but as his activism grew B's basketball career started to collapse however in 1993 during his last season in Philadelphia Bowl had a memorable game against former teammate Charles Barkley and his Phoenix Sons bow made six threes in one half with his unorthodox sling slingshot jumper man with the fling three got it which still stands as the Sixers record for most threes and a half sadly this crazy three-pointer game was one of the last minute highlights in the NBA after being surprisingly durable and missing only 54 games during his first eight NBA Seasons man's body started to break down in 1994 and 1995 he appeared in only 19 games after which he retired from the NBA because minut was also a guy who liked to party and buy drinks for every around him and because he was also a gambler minut soon ran out of money his wife even won a half million dollars on slot machines in Atlantic City at one point but they both soon squandered that money right back in 1998 when he returned to Sudan man had between 50,000 and $100,000 left the northern government offered him a job as a minister of sport and minut initially accepted but after they asked him to become a Muslim he refused and the government got extremely mad at him so when America dropped bombs on Sudan they accused him of being an American spy and he had to live like an outlaw 3 years after he arrived in Sudan as royalty he returned to America as a refugee when he got back to the US B did everything he could to earn a dollar he appeared on celebrity boxing defeating the NFL defensive end William Refrigerator Perry he even signed up for ice hockey horse jockeying and various other escapades to make money minut did manage to earn back some money that he had squandered over the years and in 2005 when the war in Sudan was finally over minut returned home home over the next 5 years he put all his efforts into building a school in his native turli as well as traveling across the whole country and promoting Independence for South Sudan however this was extremely painful for minut who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and couldn't walk without a cane due to injuries he suffered in a car crash a few years earlier still even though he somehow had to be carried from town to town minut kept preaching to people that they needed to vote for Independence unfortunately in 2010 B got a rare skin disease that caused infections and he died of kid failure less than a year after his death South Sudan declared independence with 98% of people showing up at the polls minut Bowl won the biggest fight of his life becoming even bigger than his 7 foot6 body

Channel: Nonstop

Views: 422,680

Keywords: NBA, Manute Bol, Manute Bol Highlights, tallest player in nba history

Id: U8pQVJ3ateE

Length: 14min 17sec (857 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2024