“If I’d stuck to cricket I could be Marco Jansen at this point,” Pieter Prinsloo smiled.
That’s a big statement and Prinsloo knows it, but at 2.08m tall, he certainly has the natural tools to have been a good cricketer or rugby player. Neither of those were the sports he ended up playing however, though at under-12 level, he earned Gauteng provincial colours in cricket.
The basketball bug bit at the age of 16. Instead of Lord’s, Eden Gardens or Newlands, Prinsloo, now 34, has forged a professional basketball career that has taken him to 10 countries, including Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and now the land of his birth.
It would have seemed unlikely for a child born west of Pretoria, who went to primary school on the East Rand, then grew up in a small town near Philadelphia, to end up winning a national basketball championship in El Salvador. But Prinsloo’s journey is nothing but colourful.
“I was always involved in sports; rugby, cricket, athletics … I got Gauteng colours in cricket,” said Prinsloo who attended Gekombineerde Skool Noorderlig in Benoni.
He tried baseball and American football after moving to the US, but those weren’t to his liking. Friends he’d made at school kept pushing him towards basketball on account of his height.
“My pops moved the family over (to the US) when I had just turned 12, because of work,” said Prinsloo.
“I’ve always had good footwork for a guy of my size, I run well, move well, but I didn’t take basketball seriously until I was 16. The change for basketball happened like that,” Prinsloo said, snapping his fingers. “I went from being just a tall kid and completely changed.”
Prinsloo cites the intervention of Tyrell Myers, who played at a university in Philadelphia, but who enjoyed most of his professional career in England, as the person who put him on the path to becoming a professional. “He is still my mentor.
“Myers told me when I was 26/27 I would peak. Having only started at 16, he said I was behind (in terms of development) and it would take time.”
Prinsloo’s is not a career dotted with time for NBA teams, or even G-League clubs in the US. He played for a small university in New Jersey for four seasons, had stints in the third division in Spain, for Lagos City in what was the forerunner to the Basketball Africa League, the now-defunct Continental Basketball League: Africa and even in Mozambique.
But after spending two years with the Cape Town Tigers — now crippled by poor administration — Prinsloo answered a call from his former national team coach, Florsheim Ngwenya, to join the Johannesburg Giants, where he is captain and senior pro, in a relatively young team.
It’s got to be a struggle for South African kids who want to make basketball a career. It’s complicated, which is sad
— Pieter Prinsloo
Along with his playing career winding down, the decision to join the Giants has forced Prinsloo to engage with South African basketball and particularly how to use the enthusiasm at youth level to grow the sport in a more structured way.
“It’s got to be a struggle for South African kids who want to make basketball a career. It’s complicated, which is sad,” he said.
The sport is poorly run at national level, belying the enthusiasm that exists for it among the youth. A number of especially private schools in Johannesburg, have started basketball programmes, purely because of the demand for it from pupils. St John’s College in Johannesburg recently hosted over 20 schools from around the country, including from Mauritius and Zimbabwe at under-19 and under-15 A and B levels, for a four-day competition.
“There is talent galore here,” said Prinsloo. “It needs to start younger but that is an encouraging first step … the fact that high schools are really pushing it, especially the private schools, because there’s money for the facilities and they can give the kids the opportunities.”
Though Prinsloo stated he is happy to help out once his playing career ends — in three or four years time — he wants to assist now with the creation of a pipeline to get young players, who dream of playing professionally, to go to the US.
“I have the connections,” he remarked and highlighted his mentor Myers who runs an academy and is head coach at a school in Delaware as one avenue he’d use. “He already brings African kids over there. If I can sit down and tell him that we have this talent, to get those kids to the States, if that is the route we have to go, then I can do that.”
Meanwhile he’s already in negotiations with partners in Cape Town to create a facility there, just so anyone who wants to play — young and old — can do so in a decent in-door hall.
Prinsloo is looking forward to the spotlight the BAL will shine on him and the Johannesburg Giants in Tshwane this week. “It’s an honour to play at home. There are people here that have never had the opportunity to see me play basketball. It’s a chance to show that a kid from the city, born here in 1992, can come here and put on a show for the city and for the country. I’m tremendously excited, there is energy flowing through my body.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.