When Cape Verde’s Kriol Star take to the court in the Basketball Africa League (BAL) Sahara Conference in Dakar on April 26, against defending champions Petro de Luanda, they will make history.
The team, founded by Cape Verde international Joel Almeida and American venture capitalist Paul Bragiel, represents the third-smallest African country by population (only 500,000) and the smallest to qualify a team for the BAL. The previous holder of that record, the Central African Republic, has a population of over 5 million.
Apart from Petro, Kriol Star will come up against 2022 champions US Monastir and hosts ASC Ville de Dakar. It is arguably the toughest conference in the league, but Cape Verdean basketball has triumphed through tougher challenges before.
In 2007, the men’s national team finished third at the AfroBasket in Angola and in 2023, they became the smallest country ever to compete in the FIBA World Cup. Although not without challenges, the runners-up of the Road to BAL East Division qualifiers believe they can become genuine title challengers.
“Every competition that I do; that’s the mindset I try to implement… We’ve got to go out there and do whatever it takes to do it,” Almeida told ESPN. He was speaking not only as the team captain, but also as a part-owner.
Kriol Star — which started its basketball project last year after starting out as a social development organisation — is competing at the BAL with similar funding to the Capeverdean Basketball League (CBL) which Almeida founded with the help of business partners in 2023.
Being a FIBA-sanctioned league, the BAL is not bound by the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, which prohibits direct active player ownership of NBA teams.
History suggests playing for a team in which he holds a stake will have to be a delicate balancing act for Almeida. The potential pitfalls of an owner holding a role within a team have been shown at former BAL participants the Cape Town Tigers.
Their former CEO, Raphael Edwards, served on the coaching staff while also having a stake in holding company Severus LLC. He had strained relationships with his colleagues prior to his 2024 resignation as CEO amid alleged incorrect reporting of player payments.
Almeida, however, told ESPN that Kriol Star has a competent team in place to run the organisation during this year’s tournament and he has no intention of focusing on anything other than his performance on the court.
He said: “It’s a very good question. Right now, I’m basically the founder and CEO as Kriol Star… I also have Paul Bragiel [on the business side]. I’ll also be playing in the BAL. It will be historic not only for the country but also for me to participate as a player and I was with the team for the Road to BAL also.
“This is the continuity. I guess you could call it owner/player, but I don’t view it that way, because we have put people in place that will take care of the management process.”
Bragiel has a fascinating variety of sporting involvements. This includes coaching two cross-country skiing teams, Tonga and Colombia, at the same time during the 2018 Winter Olympics. He is a key backer of Kriol Star and Cape Verdean basketball.
An angel investor in Uber, the co-founder of Bragiel Brothers was also involved in Niantic, the software development company behind Pokemon Go.
Bragiel told ESPN: “Uber – I was involved as an advisor to the company. I’ve known Travis [Kalanick], the founder, many years before he started the company.
“Pokemon Go – I was not a seed investor – I came in at a later stage, but we were involved in that and many other really big companies around the world.”
His portfolio also boasts Stripe, Unity and Zappos. Incidentally, he also invested in the Cape Town Tigers, which was how he met Almeida.
Almeida sought a meeting with bragiel at Quai 54, the world’s biggest streetball tournament, in 2022. Almeida had come up against Bragiel’s Tigers at that year’s BAL while playing for Cameroon’s Forces Armées et Police (FAP).
“Ahead of the tournament, I think Joel got wind that I might be in town or something like that and so he cold [messaged] me on Twitter. I was like: ‘Ok. I like his hustle.’ I remembered my team, the Cape Town Tigers had played against him in the BAL tournament, so I was like: ‘Yeah; I’ll take a meeting,'” Bragiel said.
“We met up at the Quai 54 tournament and he told me all about his story with Cape Verde basketball and how it’s growing. He told me about his professional career and his dreams of trying to transition out of [playing] the sport at a later date.”
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Bragiel was convinced to invest despite the country’s small population, because he believes Kriol Star can capture hearts both in the country and beyond.
He said: “I don’t see it as a niche. I see it as a beautiful story. Yeah, the local audience [is about] 500,000 people but I see it as a global story. Let me give you a parallel: Here in America, we have a football team called the Green Bay Packers. The city itself – 105,000 people.
“It’s considered one of the most iconic brands of American football in the world and it’s all because it’s an underdog story; they’re a professionally run organisation and it’s captivating a lot of people.
“For me, I see it as investing into an amazing team. I love Joel; I love some other people that he’s hired around the team. I’m also super captivated [by the fact that] Joel works with his brother, Ivan. I work with my brothers on various projects.
“I see this as a beautiful bigger story [and] I see it also as a story that’s [part of the greater success of] basketball in Africa. I also was very closely watching the Cape Verde national team and how well they did at the World Cup; in the run-up to the Olympic qualifiers.
“All these things aligned to me and it made sense. I’ve been to the country; it’s a beautiful country. The people are awesome. It’s at the intersection of Africa and Europe. I think it also could plug into the Portuguese-speaking world – obviously, Brazil and Portugal – so, I see it being more than the country. I see it being the fan favourite or a way for many fans to come into the BAL product from a very different angle.”
Kriol Star have announced the majority of their roster for the BAL. They have brought in two foreign guards with European experience in American Patrick McGlynn IV and American/Sierra Leonean Richaud Pack.
Angolan center Teotónio Dó is another foreign signing, while Nigerian center Lewis Uvwo, who joined from the NBA Academy. Late additions were Cameron Parker and Joel Ntambwe, who is Golden State Warriors power forward Jonathan Kuminga‘s brother.
Along with the Almeida brothers and CBL duo Tavares and Helton Correia; the other confirmed Cape Verdean players on the roster are Ivan Almeida, Kenneti Mendes, Anderson Correia, Luis Teixeira, and Davide Buccilli. The club president is Joseph Lopez, while Hugo Salgado is the head coach.
Joel Almeida is confident that after playing in the FIBA World Cup, the already talented Cape Verde national team players will approach the challenge ahead from a new perspective with more experience.
“I think the roster has a little bit of everything. It has the two pillars: great national talent and a very good bunch of imports that fits the vision and the strategy of not only the coach, but also the team – our DNA,” Almeida said.
“We have experience with the national team players. We have the youth that comes from our uprising from upcoming talent and players that are playing in the CBL.
“We have that integration there and in the imports, we have experience. We have determined players and we have grit. We have not only attitude, but also smarts. This is the combination we want to have: we want to have IQ, athleticism and a winning mentality on the roster.”
They may be debutants in a tough conference, but with a blend of experience and an element of surprise, Kriol Star are far from out for the count.
The BAL airs on ESPN’s channels in Africa (SuperSport 218 and 219, Starsat 248).