Video: A Scholarship that changed his life- Satnam Singh's journey to the NBA
A decade ago, Basketball was just like any other sport in India. Hidden in the shadow of cricket, very little fan base, no fierce competitions. But the time for everything comes around and time, it seems, has arrived for Indian basketball.
First it was Sim Bhullar, the Indian-origin player, who represented the Sacremento Kings. Now, it could well be the turn of Satnam Singh Bhamara, a 19-year-old, hailing from Chawke village in Punjab, but hoping to make it big on the world stage. But every successful story has its own struggle and in Satnam Singh’s case it was no different.
In this exclusive video, Satnam talks about the physical work put by him off the court, elaborates the work he is putting getting the shots right and provides a glimpse of what to expect from him, if he does make it to the NBA.
All the hard work, put in Satnam, bore fruit when he was called upon to work out with the Boston Celtics ahead of the 2015 NBA Draft, scheduled to take place at the Barclays Center on June 25th 2015.
The General Manager of the team Danny Ainge had this to say about Satnam, “We hadn’t seen him, and whether it’s this year or down the road, you never know when you’re going to have to evaluate him. He’s humongous. He’s really, really big. He’s a very nice kid and has an interesting story.”
Every success story requires a support system and Satnams’s passion could’ve transformed into nothing had the exceptional personnel at IMG-Reliance not provided him with a Scholarship Program in 2010 to train with the best coaches and the best facilities on offer and more crucially, though, provide him with full funding and incur all his costs that included training, travel and other professional costs.
With just 24 days to go for the Draft, these are extremely interesting times for the game, not just in the USA but also in India and there could be case, where in about a month’s time, we could be celebrating the success story of Satnam Singh Bhamara.