It may not yet be evident to the casual Australian basketball fan, but there's a revolution coming. A revolution that has been bubbling away beneath the surface of mainstream basketball for many years, and is only now starting to bear fruit.
As of right now, there are eight Australians playing in the best basketball competition in the world, the NBA. The last three NBA championship-winning teams all had Australian representation and with Patty Mills at Spurs, that streak has every chance of extending another season. Andrew Bogut could also have been in contention for another NBA ring, but he suffered a broken leg moments into his Cleveland debut.
In the last NBA draft, there were two Australians taken in the top ten, including the first overall pick in Ben Simmons. But has this apparent golden age of Australian basketball hit its apex? Far from it. Because the South Sudanese revolution is coming, and it's going to be incredibly exciting.
If you were one of the millions of people who harvested a mixture of both excitement and intrigue when Thon Maker burst onto the scene, be prepared to scratch your head in awe all over again, because there's plenty more to come.
Let's have a look at the numbers, shall we? This year, there are 63 Australian men on Division One basketball rosters across the United States. Of those sixty-three, nine of them are, like Maker, South Sudanese born. That's a whopping fourteen percent.
If we then included all of the South Sudanese-Australians playing high school ball in the States, that number increases again. As blown away as we were (and, in many ways, still are) by Maker's athleticism, these kids aren't too far behind. But it's not only their basketball ability and freakish athletic talents that make them so special; it's how they got there.
Louisville sophomore Deng Adel came to Australia via Uganda with his mother and five siblings after fleeing war-torn Sudan. He didn't know a lot about basketball when he arrived in Australia, but he was encouraged by friends to go down and participate in a training session with the Longhorns Basketball Club, a domestic club located in the western suburbs of Melbourne.
Adel wasn't even a teenager at the time but to Manyang Berberi, the Longhorns founder and coach, it was clear from the get-go that Adel was special.
"When he was only 12, I saw something special in the way he handled the ball. He was very smooth and natural," Berberi told ESPN.
Berberi was drawn to Adel straight away. Here he was, a skinny little kid, in his first training session, hanging with the big boys in a notoriously physical and downright difficult session. He was unflappable. Or so Berberi thought.
"He got pushed around a little bit," Berberi said. "Training was a little bit physical. After the session, he just left; he disappeared and never came again."
Thankfully for both Berberi and Adel, it didn't end there.
"I tracked him down two weeks later and I said, 'look, I know the training was a little bit physical and tough with running and push-ups and all that, but if you want to make it, if you want to do well in basketball, get used to tough players and hard competition'.
"So he came back for training and never missed another training session again. (From there) we just started to see that he had a very good attitude -- he was really competitive."
For Berberi, it's important to make sure that the training sessions really challenge his players and take them out of their comfort zones. That way, if they do get the opportunity to play in the States, they are prepared for the level of competition they will be face.
"As a coach, I usually like the kid that comes in and when we're doing drills and push-ups and all that, they just want to be the best," Berberi told ESPN. "They just want to compete hard, you know?
"The thing that I've seen with some of the kids from our community is, the ones that come here and (if) you had a tough background you're like, 'oh, wow, this is great'. You really appreciate the opportunity you get. You cherish it and (say), 'I'm excited just to have this'. They don't take it for granted."
This is why it's so important for these communities to have people like Adel to look up to. Every time one of these kids becomes successful, it helps those still coming through the system. Being able to have college-calibre players right there watching over them, visiting them and encouraging them, is hugely beneficial.
They know, from the very beginning, exactly what is required to follow in the footsteps of their idols and it gives them the confidence to know that one day, they can be the one the next generation looks up to.
Eventually, Berberi encouraged Adel to take up officiating to teach him responsibility and the importance of respecting officials. From there, opportunities started to open up for him and he excelled.
When the opportunity came up for him to follow in the footsteps of another former Longhorn and Deng's current Louisville teammate, Mangok Mathiang, and go to Victory Rock Prep, an elite high school program in Florida, Berberi recommended he take it. Adel was quick to seize the opportunity.
While Adel had already been accepted to play at Victory Rock Prep by the time he moved to Florida, head coach Loren Jackson had actually never seen him play. In fact, their only interaction that Jackson had been a number of phone conversations in the preceding months. Yet even over the phone, Jackson knew that this now 15-year-old from South Sudan, via Uganda and then Melbourne, was something special.
"The way he answered (my questions), how thorough he was, (and) how concerned he was about getting better as a student and as an athlete, I knew I just liked him as a kid," Jackson told ESPN.
"That was the biggest thing for me more-so than anything was that he had the personality that makes for a successful young man."
It would come as surprise to anyone familiar with Jackson and the Victory Rock program, but the culture that he has been able to create and sustain at the school has been nothing short of remarkable. It's a place where students love playing and where they all get along off the court. It is, as Jackson likes to put it, a very family orientated program.
This is perhaps best reflected by the way the players themselves are in charge of recruiting, rather than Jackson or any of the other coaches.
This is why Victory Rock's relationship with the Longhorns has been and will continue to be so beneficial for both parties, and it's the reason why Victory Rock currently have five other South Sudanese-Australian players on their roster. The culture clearly works.
"You're playing for more than just yourself when you hit the floor," Jackson told ESPN. "You're playing for your family, you're playing for the program that you represent.
"We have a culture (where) we work our a-- off in school and on the basketball court. I'm not concerned about a good basketball player. I'm concerned about a good person. We can mould the rest of it."
And that's exactly what Jackson and the other coaches at Victory Rock did with Adel. For while he was a good athlete with tremendous energy and excellent endurance, Adel still needed to learn the difference between the American game and Aussie games.
"(These players) are very raw when they come here so my thing is to teach them the game and also teach them discipline and how to become a successful man," Jackson said.
"At the beginning, (Adel) really could not guard the basketball very well. He was a great athlete, but really didn't have a clue of defensive concepts. What's interesting now is that he is one of the better defenders in the ACC. Just looking at that, that really makes me happy that he is able to be one of the better defenders in the college game now.
"That all came down to the fact that he wanted to work and wanted to get better, and that was what impressed me more than anything. He really enjoyed competing."
It's a sentiment echoed from every level Adel has played. His unwavering work ethic and insatiable drive to improve every single day he sets foot on a basketball court really sets him apart from the pack. It's one of the reasons Adel's current coach and Hall of Famer Rick Pitino once said: "I haven't been this excited about a recruit for 10 years."
That's high praise for someone who has mentored a plethora of NBA-calibre players such as Gorgui Dieng, Montrezl Harrell and Terry Rozier.
When asked what he thinks NBA coaches will like about Deng, Jackson was quick to the punch.
"His versatility. His ability to play multiple positions, guard multiple positions. I think he can guard four different positions, from the point guard to the four. And he can play three positions; he can play both wing positions and the four if you wanted to play smaller."
Jackson added: "I think he's got an unbelievable opportunity to be an NBA All-Pro player. And I say that because I really believe that he is a young man who is not afraid of the work, which a lot of the young athletes are. He's not pampered -- we don't pamper kids in our program -- and he's also coming from a program that is a workman's program in Louisville."
And that's exactly how Pitino sees it as well. In a team currently ranked eighth in the nation, the two-time championship winning coach has trusted Adel to be a regular starter. In the twenty-nine games Adel has played this season, he has started 26. And in those 29 games he has played, he has been averaging 29 minutes of court time. That's up from a mere 12 minutes throughout his freshman season.
If Adel was to stick around and play for coach Pitino for even one more season, it wouldn't be at all unexpected to see him become one of the ACCs top all-around players. And if that does happen, he has the potential to be a top 10 pick in the 2018 NBA draft. At least that's what his former Longhorns coach believes.
It remains to be seen what the future has in store for Adel, but from what his coaches have said he certainly appears to have the drive and the backstory to be the next cult hero exciting fans in NBA arenas all over the America. And who knows? If he has a breakout tournament this year, an NBA contract could come sooner rather than later.
Either way, for a kid who has been on a journey that few people in the world could relate to, Adel's is already a huge success story. The rest from here is all just icing on the cake.