*Riches From Money-Spinning Sport
By Felix Durumbah, Abuja
There is a Nigerian strand to the ongoing overwhelming celebrations in the United States (US) following the emergence of New York Knicks as US professional National Basketball Association (NBA) champions after 53 years.
They beat San Antonio Spurs in Game 5 on Saturday, 13 June 2026 –in a match watched on TV by hundreds of millions across the world —to return as a force to reckon with in the eye-popping riches-strewn NBA.
Basketball is big business in the US and has provided a platform for many youths to live the American Dream of being Dollar multimillionaires (multibillionaires in Naira).
Twenty-eight-year-old Nigeria-descent OG (Ogugua) Anunoby of the Knicks is one.
He is presently lapping up global adulation from the team’s phenomenal victory, rightfully taking his place among a solid cast of respected high performers such as Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, Mitchell Robinson, and others.
Anunoby plays as a forward, used mainly as a Small Forward (SF) and Power Forward (PF), but his tiptop defensive skills hand him extra advantage as he gets utilized as a dynamic wing player who can defend several positions for his team.
In Saturday’s decisive Game 5, he helped the Knicks achieve a 94–90 win and close out the NBA Finals against the Spurs, 4–1.
In a sport where height is a positive first mark-up for potential success, young Anunoby is well stacked in that department.
Presently listed with a height of 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m), Anunoby, however, had a tough start in life.
Born in Harlesden, London, England, on 17 July 1997, to Nigerian parents of Igbo descent, he suffered the first bite of life’s cruelty when while just a year old, young Anunoby lost his mother, Grace Ndidi Okereke, a track and field athlete who had competed at a national level for Nigeria, as she succumbed to cancer in Britain.
His father, Ogugua Sr., taught as a professor at Oxford Brookes University.
Three years after his beloved wife’s demise, the senior Ogugua relocated with his family, including the by-then four-year-old junior Ogugua, to the US and settled in Jefferson City, Missouri, taking up employment as a Professor of Finance, Lincoln University.
OG Anunoby played football but about age eight, he quit the round leather game to zero in on basketball as he is blessed with the requisite height.
Unrelenting in his focus to hit it big in basketball, OG Anunoby went through the grind of moving up the sport’s ranks, eventually making it to the Knicks, where he presently enjoys a five-year contract.
And he sure has no regrets as the money is rolling in –in tonnes.
For instance, for the 2025-26 season, he is on a base salary of $39,568,966 (about N53.8bn).
This is in addition to NBA’s estimated playoff pool bonus of approximately $770,000 (about N1.05b) each for helping the Knicks win the 2026 NBA Finals.
Next season (2026-27), his salary will jump to $42.5 million (about N57.84 billion).
In Nigeria, these figures are items that dizzy the imagination for the vast majority of Anunoby’s father’s native countrymen and women.
Extant records indicate that Anunoby played basketball for Jefferson City High School where in his senior season, he averaged 19.1 points and 8.6 rebounds per game, being subsequently named a finalist for Mr Basketball in the state of Missouri.
He later chose to attend Indiana University over Georgia, and others, in October 2014.
On 22 May 2026, Anunoby was named to his second NBA All-Defensive Second Team.
His prolific skills lit up Game 4 of this season’s NBA Finals, where he had a playoff career-high 33 points, making a game-winning tip-in off a missed Jalen Brunson three-pointer with under two seconds left, due to his game-saving block of a De’Aaron Fox lay up, which capped off a 29-point comeback –the largest in Finals history –to take a 3–1 series lead against the San Antonio Spurs.
*PHOTO CAPTION: OG Anunoby (r) crucially blocks Spurs player Fox’s potentially killer lay up … Saturday.
