He was only 14, but at 7 feet, he stood out in a group of 50-odd school children, selected from across the country at the Sanskriti School in Chanakyapuri in Delhi in July 2010.
Coach Dan Barto and Director of IMG’s basketball academy, Andy Borman, were scouting for talent, much to the delight of Harish Sharma, the then secretary general of the Basketball Federation of India (BFI).
Barely five years down the line, Satnam Singh Bhamra has taken a leap into the NBA, as the first Indian to be drafted in the most popular and lucrative basketball league of the world. He follows Sim Bhullar, a Canadian with Indian roots, into the league. Satnam was picked as the 52nd in the draft for Dallas Mavericks.
It was quite obvious that Satnam was the pick of the lot among the eight children who were selected for education and training at the IMG Academy in Florida, five years ago.
While Barto has worked wonders in polishing the raw talent over the last five years, it was Dr. S. Subramanian who groomed Satnam at the Ludhiana Basketball Academy in 2003.
“He had a dream that one of his wards should play in the NBA. Today his dream has been realised. I am missing him a lot at this moment,” Satnam was quoted as saying after his selection on Thursday.
The secretary general of Punjab Basketball Association, Teja Singh Dhaliwal, while expressing delight at Satnam’s selection, fondly recalled how his father, Balbir Singh, himself over seven feet in height, from a remote village Balloke in Barnala, was keen to put his son in basketball.
Two other wards of Dr. Subramanian, Amritpal Singh and Amjyot Singh have joined the Japanese league recently. In fact when Satnam made the Indian team as the youngest for the Asian Championship in 2011 in Wuhan, China, five others in the national team were also from the Ludhiana academy.
Unfortunately, the two biggest architects of Indian basketball are no longer with us.
Dr. Subramanian died in May 2013, at the age of 75 while Harish Sharma, who took Indian basketball forward in a dynamic fashion, died of tuberculosis of the brain in February 2012, at the age of 53.
Barto promised, back in 2010, that the selected players would be able to show the difference in their game and overall personality in a year’s time. Not much has been heard about the others, but Satnam Singh has exceeded all estimates.
He was called by many NBA teams for ‘try-outs’, which showed the faith the teams had in his considerable potential. Watching Satnam’s recent training videos with Kenny Natt, another coach from NBA who trained the Indian team before Scott Flemming, it was clear that the Punjab boy was the real deal, and not hype any more.
