Ademola Okulaja

Ademola Okulaja
Player information
Nickname	The warrior
birthday	July 10, 1975
place of birth	Lagos , Nigeria
size	206 cm
position	Power forward
college	North Carolina
NBA draft	undrafted ( 1999 )
Clubs as active
1989–1990 DTV Charlottenburg 1990–1994 TuS Lichterfelde Berlin 1994–1995 ALBA Berlin 1995–1999 University of North Carolina 1999–2000 ALBA Berlin 2000–2001 CB Girona 2001–2002 FC Barcelona 2002–2003 Unicaja Málaga 2003–2004 CB Girona 2004 Benetton Treviso 2004–2005 Pamesa Valencia 2005–2006 RheinEnergie Cologne 2006–2007 BK Chimki 2007 Etosa Alicante 2007–2009 Brose Baskets 00000 00000
National team 1
1995-2007	Germany	172 games
1 As of October 6, 2007

Ademola Okulaja medal table
Basketball (men)
Germany
World Championship
bronze	2002 United States	Germany

Ademola Okulaja (born July 10, 1975 in Lagos , Nigeria ) is a former German basketball player and current player advisor.

Okulaja completed a total of 172 senior international matches for Germany between 1995 and 2007 and served as team captain for years. One of his greatest successes was winning the bronze medal at the 2002 World Cup.

life and career

Okulaja was born in Lagos as the son of a German and a Nigerian . His parents had met in Germany. At the age of three, he moved to West Berlin with his mother and brother after their parents separated. In his youth he played rugby and a lot of streetball for the Berliner Sport Verein . His basketball career only began in 1989 at the age of 14 with DTV Charlottenburg. In the following year he moved to the talent factory of TuS Lichterfelde Berlin . In 1994 he moved to ALBA Berlin and was able to get a place in the Bundesliga team the following year, which in 1995 was the first and to this day only German team to win the Korać Cup .

Ademola Okulaja, who is 2.06 meters tall and weighs 107 kilograms, played in the small forward / power forward position. His nickname when playing was due to his fighting spirit " The Warrior " (German: The Warrior). In 1995 he was appointed to the German national basketball team for the European Championship in Greece . He played his first international match on May 19, 1995 against the Netherlands and made two points.

Okulaja attended John F. Kennedy High in Berlin and graduated from high school in 1994 and Abitur a year later . In the fall of 1995, Okulaja moved to the United States at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and became a member of the college basketball team, for which he played a total of 139 games. He was elected the most important player of the team and was elected to the first team of the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference). Okulaja was the first player in the history of the college team to top them in the categories of points, rebounds, three-point throws scored and ball wins.

In 1999, Okulaja finished his studies in International Studies (with a focus on economics, politics and law) with a degree.

When there was no offer from the NBA , he moved again to ALBA Berlin for the 1999/2000 season and became German champions with the team . The following season he moved to the NBA team Philadelphia 76ers . But he got no playing time and then switched to the Spanish CB Girona during the season , where he became a top performer and star. He was named " Rookie of the Year" in Spain selected and landed in the choice of key players (MVP) in second place.

His second attempt to play for an NBA team, this time with the San Antonio Spurs , also failed. The following season he played for Spain's top club FC Barcelona and became the team's MVP.

At the 2001 European Championships in Turkey , he finished fourth with the German team. At the World Championships in Indianapolis the following year, he even won the bronze medal with the team. On the way to bronze at the World Championships, Okulaja was the second best point collector and rebounder of the German team behind Dirk Nowitzki and was third in terms of assists.

The 2002/03 season he played again in Spain, this time at Unicaja Málaga . The team reached the semi-finals of the Spanish play-offs . When his last attempt at Utah Jazz to get into the NBA failed in 2003 , he gave up his dream of the NBA.

In 2003/04 he was again under contract with CB Girona. When the team failed to make it into the play-offs, he played the rest of the season with the Italian top team Benetton Treviso .

Also in the 2004/05 season he changed the team again, this time to Pamesa Valencia . Since he sustained a knee injury, he had to cancel a large part of the season and the 2005 European Championship in Serbia and Montenegro . At the beginning of 2006 he switched to RheinEnergie Cologne , where his medical treatment was successfully continued. From the end of the 2005/06 season he was under contract with the Russian first division club BK Chimki from the Moscow region . There he played most of the 2006/07 season.

At the basketball world championship in Japan in 2006 he was next to Dirk Nowitzki the most important player in the German team and the second best scorer in the DBB selection.

After separating from BK Chimki at the beginning of the year, he only signed a contract until 2008 with the Spanish first division club Etosa Alicante in mid-April. Ademola remained in the remaining five games of the 2006/07 season with Alicante despite an average of 8.2 points and 4.4 rebounds without a win. His team fell in the table from 17th place and had to relegate to the second division.

From the 2007/08 season, Okulaja was under contract with Brose Baskets from Bamberg for two years . From the summer of 2008 Okulaja was on sick leave because he was diagnosed with a tumor after a vertebral fracture.

In the spring of 2009, he reported in the second playoff fourth-final match against MEG Göttingen that he had defeated cancer and would soon start again with training. On June 30, 2009 Okulaja announced on his homepage that he had been dismissed from his club Brose Baskets . A year later, on July 10, 2010, Okulaja declared his active career over.

Activities after the playing career

From October 28, 2010, Ademola Okulaja worked for the TV channel Sport1 . He acted as an expert and co-commentator on live broadcasts on TV and had his own column on the station's homepage.

Okulaja, who obtained a Masters degree in sports marketing and communication parallel to his professional career, founded the company pro4pros and works as a player consultant and agent. For a while, he was in charge of the German branch of the Octagon basketball agency . As a consultant he looks after Dennis Schröder , Niklas Kiel and Daniel Theis, among others .

successes

• 1995: Korać Cup
• 2000: German champion
• 2002: bronze medal world championship

Participation in major international tournaments

• Participation in European championships: 1995, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2007
• Participation in world championships: 2002, 2006

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hans-Joachim Mahr: http://mahr.sb-vision.de/dbb/html/herren/player/spielespieler.aspx?spnr=21. In: mahr.sb-vision.de. Retrieved November 12, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Business Meets Basketball · About us. In: www.business-meets-basketball.de. Retrieved November 12, 2016 . 
3. ↑ Against the old homeland . ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed on November 12, 2016]).
4. ^ Carolina Basketball Media Notes . In: GoHeels.com . ( goheels.com [accessed November 12, 2016]).
5. ↑ Ademola Okulaja fulfills his basketball dream: - WORLD. In: THE WORLD. Retrieved November 12, 2016 . 
6. ↑ Ademola Okulaja profile, World Championship for Men 2002 | FIBA.COM . In: FIBA.COM . ( fiba.com [accessed November 12, 2016]).
7. ↑ Ademola Okulaja profile, FIBA ​​World Championship 2006 | FIBA.COM . In: FIBA.COM . ( fiba.com [accessed November 12, 2016]).
8. ↑ Leonhard Kazda: Ademola Okulaja: Through Hell back on the floor . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . January 22, 2009, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed November 12, 2016]).
9. ↑ Ademoja Okulaja retires: "I won't play anymore." ( Memento from October 20, 2011 in the web archive archive.today )
10. ↑ SPORT1 brings Ademola Okulaja to the basketball team ( Memento from November 2, 2010 in the web archive archive.today )
11. ↑ pro4pros | Team. In: pro4pros-sports.de. Retrieved November 12, 2016 . 
12. ↑ themisb: German Office. In: www.octagonbe.com. Retrieved November 12, 2016 . 
13. ↑ Perform Media Deutschland GmbH: Ex-Stars want to work with Dennis - Sport - Spox.com . In: Spox.com . January 27, 2014 ( spox.com [accessed November 12, 2016]).

Web links

• Ademola Okulaja - player profile on Euroleague.net; accessed on July 4, 2017 (in English)
• Ademoja Okulaja website - Official website ( Memento of December 31, 2009 in the Internet Archive )